


The Incantation of the Oak-Priest

by relic_crown



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Centaurs, Coming of Age, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hogwarts Forbidden Forest, M/M, Major Character Death does not apply to Harry or Tom, Slow Burn, Time Travel, Unicorns, but expect themes of death and mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 36
Words: 222,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23263648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relic_crown/pseuds/relic_crown
Summary: A fifteen-year-old Tom Riddle slips through time, pulled by a scarred boy into a seemingly idyllic future. Harry Potter falls with him into a reality untouched by Voldemort's reign. Taken into the Potter household, the two form an unlikely bond – but between centaur magic, government conspiracies, and the darkness at the heart of the Forbidden Forest, this new world is not as it seems.(In which Tom learns to be kind, Harry learns to be cruel, and ancient magic sings to them both from the woods. Meanwhile, a war of metal and secrets brews in the shadows, threatening an end to the fragile peace.)
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 622
Kudos: 788





	1. Time Slippage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom shake hands over the threshold of the Room of Requirement. They wake up in the Department of Mysteries, but something's strange - the year is 1995, everyone's calling Dumbledore 'Minister', and Unspeakables are creepy as hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this story, Dumbledore has acted as a mentor for Tom from his second to fourth year (before Tom goes all murder-happy).

**Part I: A Coracle on the Seas**

When Tom’s entire world slips through his fingers, he can’t find it in himself to feel surprised. This has been a day for betrayal – he just hadn’t expected that betrayal from the Room of Requirement itself. He hadn’t expected it to rob him so utterly. To _brand_ him.

It was his last night at Hogwarts before the train returned him to his Muggles; to London, and the war. Now, he faced the bitter end of a year that had, against all odds, given him hope.

Earlier that week, as Tom passed by on the way to his Runes exam, Dumbledore had stopped him in the hallway. In the heat of June, he put his hand on Tom’s shoulder, leaning in slightly so he could look him in the eyes. “You’re going to do great things, Tom,” he’d said. Tom had nodded, because he _knew that_. Dumbledore said, “I’m proud of you. Remember that,” with his eyes going all warm and crinkly, and then, “if you need anything, my boy, just ask.”

Tom had swallowed through the numb tightness in his throat and watched Dumbledore depart in a maelstrom of chartreuse and tangerine robes. He thought of how, four long years ago, Dumbledore had given him his first hug even as he abandoned him to the gray of Wool’s Orphanage. He remembered the feel of Fawkes perching on his shoulder and the warmth of being praised in Transfiguration class.

_If you need anything, my boy, just ask_. When Tom’s old fantasy of rescue from the orphanage reared its head, he hadn’t the heart to kill it again.

And so, Tom hurried off to ace his Runes exam – and then his Defense exam, and the next day his History of Magic exam. Finals over, he found himself alone in a common room full of Slytherins who couldn’t stop talking about how _excited_ they were to be free for the summer. It was all he could do not to snap.

As he packed his bags for the next morning’s journey, Dumbledore’s hope was a snake coiled loosely around his heart, hissing quiet encouragement. A decision formed in his mind as Tom walked to the Leaving Feast, took his seat between Gideon Nott and Simon Avery, and dug into his plate of sprouts and quiche.

Tom had never asked for a favor before. Not the kind of favor someone could refuse, anyway. He hated the feeling of being at Dumbledore's mercy, but the looming specter of the orphanage and the prodding of the little hope-snake wouldn’t let him back down.

So, as the Great Hall emptied itself of laughing students and Tom forced down his last bites of sweet apple pudding, he looked up towards the Head Table and caught Dumbledore’s sharp blue eyes.

He strode up to the head table, trying to act like his kneecaps weren’t ready to invert themselves over the indignity of it all. Past the set of paisley-patterned robes, the long auburn hair, and the crooked hat, he looked up at Dumbledore himself, his mind a mystery behind piercing blue. “I need a home for the summer, sir,” he said, throat closing over his rehearsed, _Can you provide?_

Dumbledore’s mind may have been a mystery, but the look of sorrowful apology that came over his face told Tom exactly what was coming. He tuned out the old man’s excuses while he slit the hope-snake’s lying throat and hung it out to dry. May its bones serve as a reminder never to trust.

Though he did his best to sulk in the common room, Gideon and Simon accosted him with smiles and an arm around his shoulders, and Tom – who couldn’t stand that kind of familiarity even on a good day, who looked into their eyes and tasted pity on Gideon’s thoughts and felt the cloud of firewhiskey over Simon’s mind – had fled.

The Room of Requirement, far above the dungeons, stood as immovable proof that Hogwarts was _his_. Her greatest secret laid bare to him after a weeks-long search this Yule. The Room unfolded to him as a vision of the Dark Forest, knowing that it would help calm him. Tom sunk to the mossy floor, feeling his shoulders loosen and his breath come more easily.

When he couldn’t put thoughts of Dumbledore out of his head, the Room provided apparitions for him to blast down, bleeding away his anger and feeling misery surge up in its place.

And so, Tom is left alone – lonesome sorrow nipping at his heels, hoping, idle and desperate, that the Room would hide him away for a whole summer…

Instead, it does the impossible.

Tom hears a click, a _woosh_ , as the door to the Room opens to reveal a boy in a hand-knitted sweater, a cloak like liquid moonlight hanging loosely from his hand.

“Tom Riddle,” says the boy, face contorting into an ugly mask.

Tom pivots to face him fully. He’s a bit younger than Tom – third year, perhaps – hair in complete disarray, death-green eyes magnified by thick glasses. Tom doesn’t recognize him, yet the Room had just – clicked open for him. Like this scrawny boy in a dragon-patterned sweater and too-big trousers should be permitted into this hidden space of Tom’s, this refuge in the heart of the school. The rage from before spills back, and Tom nearly chokes on it.

No, he must be polite, delicate; he must always play the good boy for the other magicals – _but how is it that Tom doesn’t recognize this boy_ – Tom licks his lips and runs a hand through his hair, fixing on his most charming expression. The Dark Forest recedes behind him, peeling back to allow a radius of plain stone walls around the doorway where the boy hovers.

“I don’t believe I’ve yet had the pleasure of your acquaintance,” Tom says, making his way towards the invader and trying not to let his voice go high with rage. The Forest fades from the room entirely. The boy’s eyes dart wildly; Tom notes his wand begin to rise. He thrusts his hand out for a shake. Woodenly, the boy passes his wand to his other palm and takes Tom’s hand, making eye contact.

Tom slips into his mind and nearly jumps back out at the torrent of bone-blackening hatred that hits him. _Why_? He delves deeper, weathering the hatred. _There_. A paper-white mask, flat and sharp-boned, burning red eyes staring madly out. An enormous fang sticking out of a child’s bony brown arm. A boy settling to the ground with the winged grace of an _Avada_ victim.

The green-eyed boy jerks away, back into the hall. _No_ , thinks Tom. _I need to understand. You can’t leave_. Gripping the boy’s hand, Tom steps with him.

A vicious pull in his navel, like a terribly violent Portkey – pain in his hand where it touches the boy’s – an explosive force, a moment of flight – and all goes blissfully black.

***

A sheep is chewing on Tom’s hand. He hisses at it to go away, but it seems perfectly content to keep gnawing. He rasps out a string of angry Parseltongue. The sheep turns to him, eyes vacant and alien. Its mouth is caked with blood; Tom realizes suddenly that his hand is on fire, and the sheep is on fire, and –

His eyes fly open. The dream retreats, leaving him with only the pain in his right arm and a lingering sense of unease.

“Excellent! We were hoping you weren’t brain-dead,” says a strange, chirping voice. With his injuries, Tom dares not sit up fully; wincing, he raises just his head and sees a pair of hooded figures looming over the foot of his bed. One leans closer, faceless and dark, like the blind flailing of a worm.

Choking down a cry, Tom tries to scramble backward, but his body is unresponsive. The panic simmering in his mind since he dreamed the bloody too-sharp teeth of that sheep rises in his throat. His head lolls, searching desperately for his wand. It's nowhere to be found.

The figure creeps ever closer, wielding its clipboard like a threat.

Panic sharpening, Tom lets his control slip.

Magic leaps out of him and rips through the darkened room, hunting for a target. It seizes on a sheaf of papers that take flight and twist into a flock of deep black birds that circle the ceiling in a great gust. Tom shivers through his sleep paralysis bonds, watching with savage satisfaction as a distorted page plunges for the first figure's head. Its talons grasp half-formed and merciless towards the place where their eyes should be.

In a wave of the second figure's wand, the conjurations dissolve, settling once more into a gentle drift of paperwork.

“The Minister was not joking about this one’s power,” tuts the first figure, seemingly unruffled by the assault.

The silent figure wanders over to Tom’s left and begins fussing with an overturned table of instruments: chalk, scalpels, what looks like the steering wheel of a Muggle car…

The first figure wiggles a ritual athame out of the far wall, then makes a notation on their clipboard. “However, he completely failed to mention the subject’s emotional volatility.”

Somewhere behind the bed they’ve lain him, Tom hears a door swing open. The figures straighten. “Minister!” says the annoying one, “perfect timing! Our first subject is conscious, and judging by the health of his magic he seems to be on the way to a full recovery.”

“And the other subject?” says a very familiar voice.

“All we can do is hope, sir. There’s been no change in his condition… and if he follows with our precedents he’ll remain in the current vegetative state for around three months before his magic gives up on him and we can ethically terminate.”

Tom spends a moment grappling with the phrase ‘ethically terminate’ before his attention is caught by the new man, who is most definitively _not_ Minister Spencer-Moon. This man is clad in respectable blue-black robes. His hair is long and white, his face lined with age. He cannot possibly be Albus Dumbledore.

“Hello, Tom,” says the man – Tom’s mind pinwheels. Dumbledore has an elder brother, but surely no one in their right mind would call Aberforth ‘Minister.’ The man-who-isn’t-Dumbledore puts a gentle hand on Tom’s shoulder and smiles. There's something strange about his eyes that Tom can’t quite pinpoint, but they are as bright and impregnable as ever. No one has ever smiled at Tom the way Dumbledore does.

“Professor Dumbledore,” he says, alarmed to find his voice scratchy and weak. “How – Where –”

“We are in the Department of Mysteries, in the human research lab of the Time Sector. The year is 1995.”

Tom feels icy shock spread down his body. He tries to flex his paralyzed fingers, but they remain motionless and freezing.

Dumbledore, perceptive as ever, waves an unfamiliar wand over Tom, ending whatever spell had kept him pinned. Tom curls around his core, taking a moment for relief over his own mobility, then brings himself into a sitting position, the better to display his righteous anger. Old as this Dumbledore may be, he still betrayed Tom in a way that makes him want to send his magic on another vengeful circle around the little research room.

“I don’t care to be a human research subject, sir,” Tom says evenly, relieved to hear his voice come out stronger.

“Common procedure for cases of time slippage, my boy. Situations like yours happen more often than one would expect, especially within the walls of Hogwarts castle.”

“Is it procedurally appropriate to _release_ subjects once they’ve been briefed on their situation?”

Tom has been trying to forget about the worryingly excited hooded figure with the clipboard – a Ministry Unspeakable, he now realizes – but they seemingly can’t help but respond to his question. “Mr. Riddle, we can’t possibly let you loose until we’ve properly analyzed your case! Fifty-three years’ travel into the future is a significant outlier in the data we’ve collected up till now.”

The silent Unspeakable nods their hooded head and holds up a graph that means nothing to Tom, pointing emphatically at a dot to the upper right.

Tom pinches the bridge of his nose and wonders if the Ministry might consider feeding him.

Dumbledore kneels on the floor beside Tom’s bed. “I’m so glad that you’ve returned to us, Tom. I feared for so long that you might be lost completely… that fear has haunted me for five long decades.” His voice is soft enough not to carry to the Unspeakables.

“Thank you, sir,” says Tom, failing to conceal a tremble in his voice.

“Can you stand?”

Tom tries, with Dumbledore’s spindly strength holding him up. The Unspeakable makes a kind of clucking noise every time Tom moves, but seems to respect Dumbledore’s authority. Upright once more, Tom finally considers his wounded right hand.

The scars are like a strange art piece; embroidery thread looped around his bones, pink and white and fragmentary. As if his hand were a fine glass sculpture hit in the palm by a mallet, shattered, and pieced back together such that the cracks still showed. He touches it gently with his left hand, feeling the rawness and bumps to it. How utterly bizarre.

Dumbledore watches over his investigation with a kind of sad fondness that leaves Tom uncomfortable. “You’re Minister, then?” Tom hears himself say as if from a great distance. “Must have been a strange fifty-three years.”

“Unspeakables Spavin and Fawley, I must ask for a moment of privacy,” says Dumbledore over his shoulder, and Tom’s hooded figures dart like shadows out into the hall. Dumbledore guides Tom back to his seat on the bed, and perches beside him. “If I have your permission to waffle on about history, I would be delighted to fill you in on the state of our world.”

Dumbledore tells Tom that after his encounter with the green-eyed boy outside the Room, the war against Grindelwald had raged another three years. Dumbledore had finally come to his senses: the Dark Lord had to be stopped. He led a force of British wizards to the Continent in support of the Allied Wizarding Front. Grindelwald, already driven to desperation by the American involvement in his war, had agreed to stake everything on a duel with Dumbledore. Dumbledore had won.

With the war over, a new era of peace enfolded Wizarding Europe. Dumbledore was offered the seat of Minister, but he refused in favor of remaining at Hogwarts as Headmaster in old Dippet’s place. After seven years at Hogwarts, however, he finally accepted the Wizengamot’s call to the office of the Minister.

“Such a shame,” Dumbledore sighs. “As Minister, I’m expected to dress so… conservatively.”

“Ah,” says Tom, not really hearing. That makes thirty-three years in office. He is eying Dumbledore in a different light, now. “And there’s been peace for all that time?”

“More or less.”

“Has anyone,” Tom checks that the door is shut tight and lowers his voice. “Has anyone openly carried the Mantle since Grindelwald?”

Dumbledore’s eyes seem strange in the ambient light of Tom’s holding chamber. For a moment, he thinks they aren’t blue at all, but rather – he blinks, and the illusion vanishes. “Wherever the Mantle – both Mantles, in fact – might be, they are not advertising themselves.”

Tom feels a bit faint. He needs to get his newly-scarred hands on some modern history books.

“In a moment, I’ll leave you to get some well-deserved rest,” says Dumbledore. “But I think it would be best if we first checked in with your fellow patient.”

In one motion, Dumbledore rises to his feet and conjures an elegant cane for Tom. Tom hobbles in his mentor’s wake, following him into a hallway of polished black surfaces. If not for gravity and the shape of the doorframe, Tom thinks, he would not be able to tell the floor from the walls from the ceiling.

There are no lights, but Tom can still see perfectly. Dumbledore, as if sensing his fascination, sends him an amused smile over half-moon glasses before guiding him a short way down the hallway towards a door identical to the one they had only just emerged from.

The Unspeakables wait inside, looming in all their hooded glory over a bed similar to Tom’s, except for the circles of runes scrawled around it – and, Tom realizes, the floor and walls, too, are papered with symbols. _Forbiddance_ , he reads, and _Quietude_ , and _DO NOT TOUCH_. Runes are weird.

“Do you know this child?” says Dumbledore.

Tom forces himself to look at the boy lying, corpselike, on the bed. _Ethically terminate_ , he thinks. That could have been _him_. He could have been dead. “I don’t know him." He swallows. “But I’ve seen him before. _He_ knew _me_. He said my name.”

“It is our belief that he is from this time. 1995. You see, there is a boy of the same age attending Hogwarts who bears a remarkable similarity to him, but for some… physical indicators.” Dumbledore smooths back the boy’s bangs to reveal a jagged white scar.

Tom’s eyes wander, catching on the boy’s right arm. The same shattered-glass scars on his own hand stand lividly out from the boy’s. “So, what, he’s the secret twin of a Hogwarts student? That makes no sense.”

The noisier Unspeakable clears their throat self-importantly. “This is the fourth-recorded incident of reality-hopping in the last seven centuries. We believe this child is a version of Henry Potter from a timeline separate from our own.”

Tom steps closer to the boy’s bed. “And none of these other… reality hoppers… have woken up?”

“It was believed that their souls flee in the jump between worlds.”

“Aren’t there spells to check for that?” Tom’s hand hovers over the boy’s. Twin mirrors, both in fragments.

“Invented just in the last century, after the three previous subjects had all passed. We tested this one, and he has his soul. It’s… irregular, certainly, but there.”

Tom touches his shattered right hand to the back of the boy’s scarred palm.

The boy’s eyes, green as death, slam open.

The chatty Unspeakable crows with animal joy. Their partner scribbles eager notes on their graphing paper. Tom… Tom stares.

***

Harry wakes to Tom Riddle – not _again_ – looming over him like a vengeful skeleton, with his pale bony face and rot-dark eyes. Harry remembers thinking that diary-Riddle was very handsome, but in plain hospital robes, his hair a wreck and his eye sockets bruised with lack of sleep, he is much diminished. Harry wishes he would stop staring like that, all murderous and intrigued. As if _Harry_ were the impossibility between the two of them.

Beyond Riddle stand two hooded figures. A terrible jolt of fear runs through Harry – perhaps the week since the graveyard was just a dream – Voldemort has captured him, somehow revived the diary-Riddle – those figures could be Death Eaters, disguised by darkness rather than masks. Harry tries to leap to his feet, to reach for his wand, but finds himself immobilized.

“ _Hell_ ,” says Riddle, backing up a step – Harry figures something in his expression has alarmed him. _Good_ , he thinks for a fierce moment before all his mental energy suddenly shifts to complete shock over the strangeness of hearing Lord Voldemort use a Muggle swear.

Then Harry notices Dumbledore, wearing professional clothing and a practical hat, at the shoulders of the Death Eaters. It’s the hat, finally, that breaks him. Dumbledore would never wear something so boring and – frankly – Muggle. Harry closes his eyes and tries to breathe, closing himself off from the gibbering nonsense of it all.

A minute passes, then: “Mister Riddle has gone to get a well-deserved snack and a nap. Unspeakable Spavin is still here to keep watch over you, but Unspeakable Fawley has gone with Tom. We need your testimonial, my boy. Can you tell us what happened?”

Harry opens his eyes. Dumbledore is still wearing muted colors and looking presentable, but he can deal with that much. Tom Riddle is gone, and those hadn’t been Death Eaters at all, just overly mysterious Ministry workers. _Okay_. “With all due respect, sir, I already told you all about what happened at the graveyard… If the Ministry needs my testimony, can’t they just get it from you?”

Dumbledore looks rather dumbfounded. “Let’s start at the beginning, please. I don’t need to know about… the graveyard.”

Harry closed his mouth, frowning. What could possibly –

“What is your name?”

Dumbledore had never struck Harry as the type to play cruel jokes like this. Is this some kind of concussion protocol, like Dudley had started teasing him with whenever he hit Harry in the head? _How many fingers am I holding up? No. Let’s try an easier one. How dead are your parents_? Maybe Harry _has_ hit his head. That would make all of this make more sense. “My name is Harry James Potter.”

“Good. And your parents’ names?”

“James Potter and Lily Potter.”

“Today’s date?”

“June… June 26th. 1995.”

“What can you last remember?”

Harry relaxes slightly. This seems a lot like concussion protocol – _real_ concussion protocol, not the crap Dudley had picked up from wrestling. “I was out – after curfew,” Harry says, checking to see that Dumbledore doesn’t look mad. He doesn’t. “Just going for a walk around the castle. To say goodbye, y’know, before I’d have to go back to the Dursleys for the summer. I saw a door that I’d never seen before –” even on the Marauder’s Map “– and I was curious, so I opened it.”

Dumbledore leans forwards, an intensity in his eyes that Harry has never seen before. “What did you see?”

“A forest. Tom Riddle. He saw me, too – he looked angry, but then he wanted to shake my hand. I took his hand, but he squeezed it so tightly I was scared it would bruise. I stepped backwards out of the room with the forest – but the forest was gone – and everything exploded.”

“This was a room on the seventh floor?”

Confused, Harry nods.

“Good. Now, who are the Dursleys, Mister Potter?”

“My aunt and uncle. I live with them,” says Harry, but he’s becoming angry now – his head is fine, and he doesn’t want to talk about his family.

“Why don’t you live with Lily and James?”

“Because Voldemort killed them thirteen years ago,” Harry snaps. “I’m not bloody concussed, okay? I don’t know why I’m here, but this little interrogation is not helping.”

“Spavin, do you have the Veritaserum on hand?” Dumbledore says, looking beyond Harry. There is such ice in his eyes that Harry barely recognizes him.

The Unspeakable in the shadows cackles. “Thought you’d never ask!”

They administer the potion by a syringe to his immobilized arm rather than by mouth. The injection hurts even through his paralysis.

For a fleeting moment, Harry thinks he can fight the potion just like he had the Imperius curse, but he’s so tired and the fog of willful obedience that the Veritaserum invokes is so intoxicating.

Harry tells them about his childhood, about Voldemort, about Quirrel and Sirius and the travesty that was the Yule Ball. He tells them about the diary, the basilisk, and the terrible Chamber locked deep under the school. He talks until the potion finally wears its course, leaving his throat is raw and aching. Dumbledore is very quiet.

“I don’t understand, sir,” Harry croaks. “You were there…”

“Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore says, “I'm afraid you have been the unfortunate victim of a rare form of what the Department of Mysteries calls _time slippage_. Today is the 28th of June, 1995, but no Dark Lord has set foot on British soil for over a century, James and Lily Potter are very much alive, and Tom Riddle has been missing for fifty-three years.”

“My parents are alive?” is all Harry can think to say.

The last of the ice in Dumbledore’s eyes melts. “I’m sure they’ll be ecstatic to meet you, Harry.”

The Unspeakable squawks. “Minister, that is against every rule we have! Does this mean _nothing_ to you?” Harry follows their gloved finger to a series of completely unintelligible runes painted near the ceiling.

“Those rules are for cases of travelers to the past from the future in a continuous timeline. We’re only invoking them because we have no rules for inter-reality travelers. Besides, this is _Lily and James_ we’re talking about. If we cannot trust those two, we are truly lost.”

Harry is exhausted and beyond confused, his hand feels like it was gored by a Hungarian Horntail, and some of the implications of Dumbledore’s words are starting to sink in. But all of that is nothing compared to the bright hope he feels at the prospect of meeting his parents. He feels eleven again, sat in the dust, staring up at a phantasmal family.

“Mister Potter,” Dumbledore says, so serious that Harry feels himself wake up a little, putting aside his fantasies. “During our scans, we found something strange that you ought to know about. Did you consent to a semi-sentient magical parasite’s attachment to your soul?”

“Fuck,” says Harry, biting his tongue too late. “What does that even mean? I – _no_. Shit.”

Dumbledore smiles benignly. Harry figures that’s his way of saying he doesn’t mind the profanity. “Do you want it removed?”

“Yes? I think? What is it? Magical parasite sounds – bad. Really bad.”

Dumbledore looks into his eyes for a long moment. _That’s it_ , thinks Harry. _That’s what seems off about his eyes. They aren’t twinkling like they did. How strange._

“We’ll leave you to your rest now, Harry. We will discuss your soul at a later date,” says Dumbledore. “Stay brave, little one.”

The Unspeakable who had seemed so joyful at the prospect of dosing Harry with Veritaserum lingers by his bedside. The lower their hood, revealing a woman with yellowy eyes and a head of feathers growing where most people have hair. “Would you like me to spell you to sleep, Mister Potter?”

She seems kinder now that he can see her face. “Yes, please.”

The strange little Ministry room dissolves into an ashy dreamscape as Harry lets Spavin’s spell carry him to sleep at last.

***

Harry comes to with the abrupt sensation of a _Rennervate_. In the same breath, he feels the magic that had kept his body petrified dissipate, leaving him free to set about methodically cracking his knuckles, spine, neck, and toes.

Riddle has returned. He regards Harry’s popping toes with abject horror. Dumbledore, standing cranelike beside Riddle, seems fascinated. The quiet Unspeakable happily scribbles away at their clipboard, no doubt making record of Harry’s wakeup ritual. He cracks his wrists, too, just for them.

“What happened to my hand?” he says, glimpsing the mostly healed patchwork of scars scrambling over his right arm. “I don’t think I had these before.”

“A side effect of the powerful time magic you invoked, we think. Tom here was also marked.” Dumbledore gives Riddle an unsubtle nudge, prompting him to hold up his similarly mangled forearm.

“Now back to business!” Unspeakable Spavin, who has pulled her cloak back up over her face, steps out to stand beside her silent partner. She claps in apparent delight, filling Harry with a deep, wriggling dread. “Time for paperwork and restrictions!”

Dumbledore beams. “I can hardly wait. But first, might I suggest we bring in Lily and James?”

The quiet Unspeakable points insistently at one of the runes, this time one on the floor.

Riddle frowns, squinting at the ground. “Does that say something about whale organs?”

“Excellent translation, Tom! But no, Unspeakable Fawley is indicating those symbols a bit to the right, which serve as the key to this third runic circle. We’ve found that a combination of –”

“No time for humdingering around, Minister. Mr. Potter, if you’d just sign here, we can all get moving…”

Harry takes the document Spavin offers him, still puzzling over ‘whale organs’ and desperate to get out of this stifling room. Between Veritaserum and Riddle’s future employment as a Dark Lord, he trusts no one in his vicinity. Dashing out his signature, Harry resolves to take a page from fake-Moody’s book and practice _constant vigilance_ until he manages to get out of this mess. Yes, no one in this supposed other timeline will be getting one over on him, not again –

“Excellent!” crows Spavin, snatching the contract from Harry. “We have ourselves a legal consent to brand! Everyone ready?”

As they paralyze Harry once more, brush aside the hair growing shaggily over the nape of his neck, and press something blisteringly hot into the skin there, Harry realizes that he has made a mistake. The smell of burning flesh hits him a moment later, and Harry feels his thoughts slow to an incredulous crawl. He’s spent over fourteen years on this planet. How has it taken him until now to realize how monumentally _stupid_ he is?

Quiet Fawley comes up beside him. They don’t verbalize their spells, but Harry feels his damaged nape knit itself together, pain fading into a cool numbness. He tries to say ‘thank you,’ but realizes that paralysis has locked up his head and mouth, too.

After a moment, Dumbledore murmurs what Harry recognizes as the counter to _Petrificus Totalus_. Harry finds himself locking eyes with a blank Riddle. His face has a bit more color to it now, but he still only seems to increase in creepiness each time Harry meets him.

Harry very gingerly reaches around to prod the back of his neck. “What –”

“Simple unspeak-seal,” says Spavin idly. “Everyone in the Department has one. It’s what gives us our name – just stops us from spilling intradepartmental secrets to anyone not in the fold. The same brand is also applied to people who have slipped in from the future – it’s a way to protect the timeline.” She turns her hood on Harry. “Just because _we_ didn’t mean you harm, though, doesn’t mean that you should be signing binding contracts willy-nilly.”

A ghost of a smug smile touches Riddle’s lips. Harry hates him with every twitching muscle in his body.

Dumbledore breaks rudely into Harry’s murder fantasy. “Intradepartmental secrets include most details of your, ah… home dimension, I suppose we could call it.”

“Oh, have you been reading those Muggle sci-fi books I lent you, Minister?”

Dumbledore smiles enigmatically. The expression seems empty given the strange new flatness of his eyes. “Harry, I believe we are now at liberty to invite Lily and James inside. I’ve offered them the day off so they can meet you.”

“They work here, sir?”

“James is a bit of a rising star among the Aurors. Your mother works in Charms Architecture. Both brilliant, both with a strong working relationship to the Department of Mysteries.”

Spavin clucks anxiously. “We still haven’t fulfilled qualifications alpha-two and theta for the subject to be exposed to the outer world. I met with my bosses, and we may be bypassing a lot of normal procedure in this case, but we will not stand for _that_ particular twisting of rules, oh no…”

“James and Lily already know enough about this case that those two measures are completely irrelevant to them. It is probably better, even, that they are in the room when we explain our next steps to Mr. Potter.”

Fawley, seeming to agree with Dumbledore, wanders over to the door and opens it. Harry twists to follow their movement – his breath catches in his throat as two adults stride inside.

They look so much older than Harry expected. In his mind, they had forever been preserved as photographs of joyous twenty-somethings, caught up in the kind of love that ends wars. This Lily’s face is lined with laughter under the tiger-bright explosion of her hair – she’s cut it short enough that it just grazes her shoulders, but it still seems to fill the room. James has gone gray at the temples and grown a well-trimmed beard. Maybe it’s because of the facial hair, but looking at him doesn’t give Harry that same looking-in-a-mirror feeling that James’s old photos do.

“Sweet Merlin,” Lily murmurs, glancing around the room. “He’s a boy, not a bomb; aren’t most of these runes a tad overkill?”

“He kind of _is_ a bomb, though. It has been our job to defuse him,” says Spavin, seeming to puff up under the cloak.

“Er, thanks as always, Fawley.” James nods to the silent Unspeakable, skirting around Lily and Spavin’s little tiff so he can kneel beside Harry. “Can’t believe how much you look like Henry.” He clears his throat and gives Harry a smile he recognizes as his own. “How are you holding up, buddy? I know this is probably all kinds of overwhelming, and I know we aren’t quite the parents you knew, but the Minister has agreed to let us give you a home, if that’s what you want.”

Harry feels his throat close up. He blinks hard and feels a tear slip down his face.

James looks rather taken aback at the crying. He broadcasts an S.O.S. to Lily, but Spavin intercepts. “I see our report missed out on a couple of important details. My apologies, Mr. and Mrs. Potter! Harry here was orphaned at the age of one! A full analysis of his testimony under Veritaserum is still pending, but he suffered severe abuse throughout early childhood and likely has a bit of a complex around… family.”

Angry, Harry wipes away the tear with the hem of his hospital gown. “I don’t have a _complex_. And I wouldn’t characterize the Dursley’s treatment as ‘severe abuse’, just… I dunno, neglect?”

Spavin ignores him. “I recommend he start seeing a Mind Healer to work through all that.”

“I am going to murder Petunia,” Lily’s face has gone very pale. Harry wonders why no one ever bothered telling him how scary she had been. How scary she _is_.

Harry finds himself crying again, to his horror. James sits on his bed next to him, slings a rough arm around his shoulders, and half-holds him. It’s – comforting. No one has ever quite done something like this for him, not with this air of practice and love. James’s real son – _Henry_ – had better know how lucky he is.

James interrupts Lily’s interrogation of Spavin for ‘classified’ details of Harry’s childhood. “When can we get the kid out of this place?”

Harry finds himself distracted by Riddle, still lurking in the corner. Dumbledore’s hand rests on his shoulder, either as a comfort or a restraint. Riddle’s face wears an expression more human than Harry thought him capable of, but still beyond comprehension. Jealousy, perhaps? Is that even possible?

Lily seems to have quite rattled Spavins, who is eager to answer James’s concerns. “Harry needs to comply with sections alpha-two and theta of the Conservation of the Timeline Against Extratemporal Threats ruling. C-TAET. We passed it yesterday.”

“Okay. And what does that mean?”

At Spavin’s insistent gesturing, Fawley slips over to her side, helpfully holding up a simple pendant.

“Requirement alpha-two: disguise! The subject should not be recognizable as what we are calling a ‘temporal clone’, or a new version of a person already present in the timeline. Henry and Harry have different enough phenotypes that they are distinguishable, but they’re still genetic twins. This necklace is enchanted to place a glamour over the wearer. Fawley will now demonstrate!”

Fawley loops the pendant over their hood. There is no visible change to the shadowy abyss of their face.

“Excellent! As you can see, quite effective. Harry should feel very lucky; this product won’t be on the market for at least another year.” Spavin snaps her fingers very loudly. Fawley hands back the pendant, which Spavin places around Harry’s neck.

Harry prods his face, but it doesn’t feel any different. Riddle stares at him. Harry looks away.

“Now all we need is a cover story. The Time Council themselves have decided that you will be posing as a classmate of Tom Riddle’s who traveled with him through time! Your new family name is Partridge, and you are the last remaining member of a politically unimportant family that died out around the fifties. Sound good?”

It does _not_ , but Harry nods mutely anyway, fingering the disguise pendant.

Lily cracks her knuckles. “So, we’ve got that sorted. What’s requirement theta?”

With a flourish, Fawley offers her a sheet of thick parchment. Lily reads it over, frowning. “Three sessions a year? Why?”

“Research!” Spavin claps in delight. “We’ve already learned a great deal from Harry here. Not as much as we get from travelers from our own timeline’s future, but, well.” Her hood swivels for a moment to point at Dumbledore and Riddle. “Certainly enough information to guide the Ministry in the coming years.”

James smiles down at Harry. “What do you think about that, fawn? Three sessions a year with the Unspeakables?”

“Er, yeah, sure.”

“And Tom?” Lily’s voice goes very gentle, like she’s speaking to a wild animal. “I understand you’re stranded just as much as our Harry. Minister Dumbledore’s asked if we might open our home to you, as well. It would be our sincere pleasure to share our family with you.”

Riddle opens his mouth, then looks at Dumbledore and quiets. Harry wonders if James can feel how tense Harry’s own shoulders have gotten.

“Thank you, Lily,” Dumbledore says mildly. “I think that will be an excellent arrangement for all parties.”

Riddle curls his lip, and for a moment Harry worries for Dumbledore’s safety. “Certainly, sir,” is all he says. He turns to the Potters, face melting into the charismatic smile Harry remembers from second year. “It would be an honor to share your home, if only for the summer.” 

“I suppose that’s all sorted, then,” says a cheery Spavin as she wipes away the runes encircling Harry. “I’ll see you in two months, Mister _Partridge_! We’ll take a look at that parasite, hit you up with more Veritaserum, and have an all-around great time. Congratulations on getting some parents! Be nice to Tom! Goodbye, now!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is taken from a line in the Cad Goddeu, an old Welsh poem. (If you want to read it in its entirety, go [here](https://archive.org/stream/poemsfrombookoft00evan#page/26/mode/2up)! It's an interesting piece of history and gives off strong Tom vibes if you squint.)


	2. A Dark Lord in Pajamas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom acclimate to living with the Potters.

By the time they’ve gotten back their things from the Unspeakables, extricated themselves from the Ministry’s clutches, and Apparated to the Potter’s charming country estate, Tom has worked himself into quite the fury.

Part of the problem is that James is more goddamn tactile than even Dumbledore. Harry is getting the brunt of it: James gives him a gentle slap on the back practically every time he speaks and – Tom counts – ruffles his hair no less than three times, just in the walk out of the Department of Mysteries. He pats Tom on the shoulder a few times, while he’s at it. Why are adults always doing that to him? He doesn’t even like when Dumbledore touches him, and he’s known the Potters for barely an hour.

Every time he makes eye contact with Lily, he ends up with a heaping pile of thoughts and hopes and _emotion_. Lily is so overflowing with fierce desire, with compassion so intense it hurts Tom just to see it reflected in the lens of his mind’s eye.

And then there’s the Dumbledore thing, which alone should be enough to get Tom ready to start flaying people. Christ, but that man is two-faced. With all that talk of making amends, Tom had almost thought – but no. Dumbledore hadn’t changed a bit in fifty-three years.

That’s the thing, though: even this three-pronged rage can’t quite penetrate the lingering shock of finding himself five decades in the future, stranded from the feeble structures he had managed to erect in Slytherin. All he has left of his time is his stuff – according to the Ministry, Hogwarts had kept all his meager possessions until he popped back into existence. Apparently, students ended up swallowed up by time magics so often – something about ley lines and the ambient magic of the Dark Forest, according to Dumbledore – that there was a room in the castle devoted to holding their trunks. But still, Tom feels shaky on his feet, numb in ways that he doesn’t fully understand.

He tries to hide his stumble as Lily side-alongs him to the Potter’s home, but he sees the concern in her eyes anyway, bites his lip to keep himself from screaming at the frustration of it all – Dumbledore had given him hope, just like he had two nights/fifty years ago, then snatched it away hard enough to give Tom whiplash –

“Welcome home!” says James with enthusiasm, gesturing towards the house and grounds. Tom’s vengeful train of thought clicks to a stop as he considers the property. He might have described the house as a cottage, given the stonework and roofing style, but it’s enormous enough that that it might be more accurately described as a mansion. So. The Potters are wealthy. Rather enormously wealthy. How… _novel_.

A tangled rose garden sprawls around half the house, while a pretty blossoming creeper seems to have been given free reign of the walls. Green smoke billows from one of three chimneys. A thick birch wood encroaches on all sides, and Tom’s skin itches with the prospect of exploring, the promise of getting away from these ridiculous people for a moment.

“Wow,” breathes Harry in naked awe. He has been awed ever since he first took Lily’s hand and climbed to his feet out of his little hospital bed. Tom is completely bored of it, the wonder tumbling off him like water from a fountain. If not for the things he’d seen in Harry’s mind during their first run-in, he might have completely discounted the skinny little boy.

Tom had kept himself entertained for all of a minute by trying to figure out the glamour the necklace had placed on him – it had dulled his eyes to gray, rounded out his jawline, and made his nose a bit more upturned. But when he kept looking, the strangenesses of Harry Potter just kept piling up. Somewhere between scars and flashes of remembered green, between Harry’s recognition of Tom and the shocks of hatred in his mind when they lock eyes, there’s something the Unspeakables want. And Tom – Tom can’t walk away from that, obnoxiously awe-struck as the vessel may be.

A little girl with liquid black eyes and Lily’s fair complexion stumbles out of the garden and into James’s arms. “Are these the new boys, Daddy?”

“Sure are.”

“Good. The house is too empty without Moony and Pads.” She looks straight at Tom. He prods her mind, curious, but finds to his shock that it is as untouchable as Dumbledore’s. His attempted probe slides off her like water off an oiled rat, leaving him reeling.

“Dahl, you can’t be lonely already! Henry and Geoff got home less than two days ago.”

‘Dahl’ smirks at Tom, then buries her face in James’s stomach to hide it. Tom has never in his life felt such deep unease in the face of someone probably five years his junior. How can’t he read this child? He longs, despite himself, for Dumbledore; perhaps the old man will let Tom summer at his place, if only Tom explains how each of the Potters seems engineered specifically to drive him mad.

James turns to smile at Harry and Tom. “Kiddo’s missing her uncles Sirius and Remus. They just moved out, wanted to get a place of their own for a bit of privacy from certain snoops.” Dahl giggles shrilly as her father starts tickling her.

“Harry,” says Lily, “This is Dahlia Euphemia. She’ll be going to Hogwarts a year from now. Dahlia, this is Harry – Harry Partridge, and this is Tom Riddle. Can I trust you to be a good housemate to them, Dahl?”

Dahlia ponders this very seriously. “I don’t like how that necklace looks on you,” she tells Harry, then flounces off.

Tom fusses with his hair, trying to disguise how out of sorts he feels. That kid – she may be a threat.

Before he can start formulating a plan to figure out how a ten-year-old had managed to resist his attempted Legilimency, two boys thunder downstairs, hurtle off the porch, and swarm their posse.

“Dahlia said you two get the whole day off!” says the ruddy-haired one to Lily, practically vibrating. Tom is reminded strongly of the puppy that Simon Avery had smuggled into the dorm that fall. The thing had been cute for all of ten minutes, at least before it ate everyone’s pillows, vomited feathers all over the common room, and promptly gotten itself transfigured into a rug by Tom. Simon had been sullen for months.

The other boy hangs a bit behind his brother, assessing Tom and Harry with Lily’s pretty grass-green eyes. _I see_ , thinks Tom, _he’s the other Harry. Henry_. How strange – this new boy looks almost exactly like Harry, but they hold themselves so differently that Tom could never have confused them even without Harry’s gray-eyed glamour in place.

“Sure do, Geoff. The Minister himself gave us the mission of helping the boys settle in as best we can.” James ruffles Geoffrey’s already-messy hair.

“Mum and Dad told us the two of you were time-travelers, but not much more than that,” says Henry, fiddling with his glasses. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Harry shakes his counterpart’s hand, looking bemused. Tom notices Henry is at least two inches taller and far more solid than Harry.

Tom gets his hand shaken next. He gives Henry his most disarming smile and fills in for Harry. “I’m Tom Riddle, and this is my friend, Harry Partridge. We’re from 1942. Just took our last exams of fourth year.”

Henry considers him silently for a moment. Tom gets the prickling feeling of having caught the interest of someone rather perceptive. Between Henry and Dahlia, this summer is going to be far more interesting than dealing with the other kids at Wool’s. “I have so many questions for you,” Henry says, and opens his mouth as if to get straight into it.

A laughing Lily interjects, herding them all off for lunch. Tom is whisked off among the mob, listening as Geoffrey manages already to drag Harry into a heated debate over Quidditch. Apparently Harry’s favorite team, the Cannons, are on quite the winning streak; after Harry admits he’s only started supporting them since last summer, Geoffrey starts ribbing him about bandwagoning.

They turn right from the entranceway and find themselves in a kitchen practically singing with magic. A house elf, clad in the remnants of a floral tablecloth, hums to itself as it works the stove. The space seems to have been engineered for sunlight, with wide windows overlooking the forest set right beside the round eight-seater table. Tom feels unpleasantly as though someone has rifled about in his brain and pieced together his childhood imagining of what a _home_ might look like.

The Potter family all sit down at the table in what must be their customary places. Little Dahlia has been sat waiting for them all to come in; she beams at Harry, who sits himself next to her. Tom in turn finds himself between Harry and James.

Geoff and Henry start going off about some teacher who Tom’s never heard of while Dahlia tells Harry all about the Potter’s two kneazles, who are “shy, so you won’t get to meet them until they decide it’s okay, which might be never, like with Uncle Remus. Lincoln never did like him, and Mumma said it was ‘cause of Uncle Remus’s _condition_ , but I think it’s just ‘cause his farts are so bad…”

Tom fiddles with his napkin and tries not to be obvious about how out of place he feels. Harry might be interesting, but Tom doesn’t much like him – he comes off as vacant and secretive at once, and his unsubtle disdain for Tom is grating – and the way the Potters seem to have already claimed him as one of their own gets under Tom’s skin. For all that he doesn’t belong in this place or time, he’d figured he could learn to fit in faster than Harry.

Clearly, he has underestimated Harry ‘Partridge’s’ charisma. No matter; soon Tom will ingratiate himself with the younger Potters, then gradually work his way in with the parents. The knowledge that Harry is their own blood will weigh against Tom, but four years at Hogwarts have taught him all the skills he needs to charm an adult. Perhaps this whole mess is really a stroke of great fortune. Tom will never return to the orphanage again.

In a great _crack_ , a platter of flatbread, cheese, and beans appears before them. Ripped from his train of thought, Tom jumps violently and slams his knees into the hard underside of the oak table. He grits his teeth against a flood of curses.

Harry snickers. Lily seems more concerned. “Oh, Tom, I’m sorry! I forgot to mention to Rooke that you two might not be used to elves. Actually, that reminds me – Rooke!”

A more muted popping sound and the elf from before appears, standing on the empty chair to Geoffrey’s left. Its enormous brown eyes find Lily and it bows sharply, hands held behind its back like a soldier at attention. “Rooke, these are Harry Partridge and Tom Riddle. They’ll be living with us from now on. Please treat them the same way you would the kids.”

“Of course, Mistress Lily,” says the elf, popping away to who-knows-where.

“Rooke’s an excellent elf,” says Lily to Tom. “If you ever need her, she’s at your disposal.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” says Tom, still embarrassed and nursing stinging kneecaps. He follows James’s lead and serves himself some of the cheesy flatbread sandwich, then picks it up with his fingers and starts chewing on it pointy-end first.

“Never eaten a quesadilla before?” Harry still looks amused by Tom’s discomfiture. He shuffles, feeling hot and miserable.

“I – no. Is that Spanish?”

“It’s a dish originally from Mexico, I think. We used to have it every second week at Hogwarts.”

Tom glances around, checking that no one’s listening. “No, I’ve never had it, and neither have you, _remember_? Wartime rations? The complete unlikelihood of food trends from the Americas catching on with British wizards?”

“Right,” Harry frowns, continuing to chew with a bit more solemnity.

“I want to hear all about quesadillas in private, okay?” says Tom, intrigued by the implications of a Mexican dish in a British wizarding home.

As the pain in his knees pulses out of awareness, Tom decides the quesadilla is really quite good. Geoffrey introduces he and Harry to hot sauce, which turns out to be a terrible idea: Harry practically drowns himself in the stuff, while a few tentative drops are enough to turn Tom bright red and send Dahlia running to get him a glass of milk.

They talk about broomsticks, and Henry’s Charms class, and the antics of Lincoln the kneazle. Henry is quiet, but Tom notices how he shapes the conversation to keep both Tom and Harry not feeling left out. Lily, bright and deeply knowledgeable about magic, is starting to grow on Tom, and he feels, to his amazement, like he might finally understand the appeal of family.

It’s – it’s _nice_. In ways Tom’s life has never been. There’s something about being around people who love each other like this, with sunlight and laughter and none of the jagged silences and power plays of Slytherin. Dumbledore, he thinks bitterly, would be proud.

***

As soon as Harry finishes his lunch, Geoffrey leaps up.

“Geoff,” says James warningly.

“CanIpleasebeexcused?”

“Go crazy, kiddo.”

Geoffrey hangs on Harry’s shoulder, all freckles and joy. “You said you’re a seeker, right? Well, so’s Henry. You wanna fly with us?”

Harry agrees, and soon Henry and Dahlia are standing. Dahlia bounds for the door, off to go get the brooms, while Henry rolls his eyes and starts helping with the dishes until Rooke insists he go play. Henry turns then, face breaking out into a grin as he locks eyes with Harry.

A sudden chill slams into Harry. He feels, for a frozen moment, the strangeness of this otherworld, his isolation from all he had thought was true. How bizarre, to look at this boy wearing his face and think – well. Perhaps if not for Voldemort, and the Dursleys, and the calamity that was his childhood, this could be him.

As if sensing his thoughts, Geoffrey whines, “Tom, aren’t you coming?”

Riddle blinks. “I don’t fly.”

James laughs and pats the back of Riddle’s chair. “You do now! I’m afraid it’s a requirement of being a Potter. We all fly.”

Henry nods solemnly. Harry watches in fascination as a dimple forms in his cheek – Henry is trying not to laugh. Does _Harry_ have dimples? What other quirks of his own face has he missed in the mirror?

Riddle wavers, Adam’s apple bobbing anxiously. “Very well,” he says eventually, tossing his head with an arrogance that reminds Harry of Malfoy.

“Excellent,” says Henry, looking calculating. Does Harry, too, have a calculating look? He hopes, if he does, that it isn’t quite as obvious as Henry’s.

In the backyard, Dahlia hands them all brooms. “This looks wicked fast,” says Harry, trying to look like he’s never seen a Nimbus 2000 before. “What are its specs? I imagine there’s been a lot of improvement in broom-making in the last fifty years.” He glances at Riddle, who offers him the smallest nod of approval.

Henry seems delighted to get into a history of advances in broomcraft. Harry, who is starting to think that Henry is not another him, but rather a Quidditch-loving Hermione in disguise, is relieved when Dahlia gets bored and rockets off on one of the brooms.

“Stay over the cushioning charms, you brat!” hollers Henry before he and Geoffrey hurtle off after their sister.

Shrill laughter echoes over the forest, and Harry feels a deep yearning tug at his sternum. He has _siblings_. If this is a dream, he resolves to make the best of it while it lasts.

Slinging a leg over the broom and placing his newly-scarred hand in position, Harry is about to push off when he sees Riddle. The same feeling of yearning is splashed across his face as he looks into the sky, broom trailing in the grass at his side.

Empathy for a murderer-in-the-making has him stepping off his broom and turning to Riddle. “That’s no way to treat a broom,” he says at first, then bites his tongue. He’s been cold to Riddle, when he does have to interact with him, but it feels wrong to be cruel to anyone in the face of the tentative joy he feels inflating in his chest. “I mean, are you coming up? I’m sure Henry can catch you if you fall. These things accelerate a good bit faster than acceleration due to gravity, and, um…”

Riddle’s eyes are as dark and probing as Snape’s on a bad day. Harry looks away, not sure quite what Riddle wants from him. “I don’t fly.”

“You already said that. And then you changed your mind. Are you planning to head back inside, then?”

“ _No_. I just –”

Riddle’s hair is rather awful. It looks like someone had cut it in a sort of militaristic style, short and angular, and then left it to grow out until it flopped in loose curls over his forehead. He runs a hand through it, looking a bit wild.

Harry flexes his right hand, feeling the tug of his new web of scars, and sighs. “Never mind, then,” he says. “I’ll make your excuses.”

He swings onto his broom fast enough that Riddle startles, and then he’s gone, soaring above the trees with the other Potters. “He’s not up to it today,” he tells them over the wind in all their ears. “His hand’s hurting him and he’s still a bit nauseous from, er, time lag.”

They fly for hours, playing two-on-two hoopless Quidditch – which involves a lot of Geoffrey shouting “new rule!” – and when they get tired of that, opting for tag, and then just racing. Henry is quite good, but he can’t get the same acceleration as Harry; Geoff has potential as a Beater; and little Dahlia reminds Harry of himself in the air, reckless and darting, though she hasn’t quite figured out how to work with the others as a team. Riddle has found a book somewhere and sits curled up with it under a tree, watching.

When it comes time for them all to clean up and come to dinner, James opts to collect them by air. Geoffrey manages to loop him into a race, and he gets sidetracked long enough that Lily has to come up too. In the end it takes the family a whole hour to get back to earth.

Geoffrey latches onto Harry with absolute adoration, monologuing to his parents about how talented Harry is, and how he’s even better than Henry, maybe, and Hogwarts won’t know what’s hit it. This all makes Harry incredibly uncomfortable, but Henry seems to think it’s genuinely funny. Maybe being raised by loving adults had mellowed Henry’s temper out, because Harry himself can’t imagine not being offended by a stranger waltzing in and securing his little brother’s affections.

Riddle trails along behind the group, nose still in his book. _A Modern Magical Encyclopedia: 1950-59_ , reads the spine. Harry wonders if the Potters just… keep books that dry lying around. Surely not.

Rooke serves a pizza dinner to commemorate the second evening of summer and the addition of two new children to the household. At Henry’s suggestion, they eat in the living room on the second floor. He and Dahlia start up a rousing and messy game of Gobstones while Lily watches and Geoffrey gives James the play-by-play of one of their two-on-two games.

“And then I just kinda chucked the Quaffle at Henry,” says Geoff, gesturing broadly and knocking into Riddle, who glares at him until he backs off. “Um. Yeah. And then Harry came swooping in! And he was like, behind me, but then, _whoosh_! He’s grabbed the Quaffle! And then I go to get him but he does this corkscrew dive thing, and _bam_! Score! Except I didn’t count it ‘cause the angle of the sun was wrong. But anyway, dad, he’s really good. ‘Specially because this was the first time he was on a modern broom.”

Harry scratches his nose, guilty. “Once I got used to the extra acceleration and padding it was pretty easy.”

James beams the roguish smile from Harry recognizes from photos. “I saw you up there, kid. You’re a complete natural.”

Harry’s heard variations on the same compliment a thousand times, but this is the first time it means anything. He munches on his pizza to hide his embarrassed delight.

Geoff is busy rallying the troops to get back outside for another hour of fun before the summer sun finally sets when Lily gestures to Harry and Riddle. “Let’s get you two settled into your rooms, hmm?”

Riddle sticks a paper napkin in his book as a placeholder and unfolds himself from the couch where he’s been lurking. “Of course, Mrs. Potter.”

Lily takes them upstairs, where the Potters have four bedrooms. “The boys sleep in here. We told Henry when he turned eight that he could move into the guest room, but he and Geoff decided they prefer to share a room. Very different kids, those two, but they absolutely adore each other. There’s Dahl’s room right next to them.”

Dahlia’s door is closed, but Harry can see the absolute mess of Henry and Geoff’s room. It’s good to know that no matter the timeline, Harry is still a slob.

“This room on the left is the guest room, and on the right is Remus and Sirius’s. James and I were thinking we’d offer you the choice between rooming together or separate.” Harry opens his mouth to say ‘separate’, but Lily puts up a finger. “I warn you, James’s old school friends had sex in that room. Frequently.”

Harry’s mouth slams shut. He starts to feel like the ‘time lag’ might be getting to him, too.

Lily smiles sunnily. “Also, James and I would really prefer that we have at least one room open for overnight guests. The kids have two more honorary uncles on top of the ones who lived with us, so we have a lot of visitors.”

Harry glances at Riddle. Riddle looks very put-upon, and Harry is alarmed for the dozenth time that day by how non-snake-y his stupid face is. It should be illegal for supervillains to be relatable. Harry nods reluctantly.

“We’ll room together, Mrs. Potter, it’s no problem,” says Riddle smoothly.

“Thanks for understanding, boys,” says Lily with an overly toothy smile. “I’ll leave you to settle in, Tom. Harry, can I talk to you for a moment?”

“Of course,” says Harry, aborting his commiserating eye contact with Riddle.

He follows the bright flash of Lily’s hair downstairs, and they turn left before the living room into what looks like the master bedroom. Lily sits on the bed and Harry settles himself on the floor near her.

Lily considers him for a moment, silent. Harry fidgets anxiously with the glamour pendant, wishing someone had thought to give him a mirror.

“The report the Unspeakables gave James and I to prepare us for your situation was woefully inadequate,” she says eventually. “I need you to fill in some of the gaps for me. You said you were raised by the Dursley family?”

Harry swallows. “Yeah, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and my cousin Dudley. They didn’t like me – they didn’t like magic.”

“What did they do to you?” Harry’s not looking at her, but he can hear a tight anger in Lily’s voice that he recognizes as a cousin to his own temper.

“They didn’t – I – they just didn’t treat me like a kid. I was more like a dog, I suppose? Well, less than a dog. I can’t see them ever making Ripper do the gardening.”

He risks a glance at Lily, then looks away again, feeling words pressing their way out of him in a half-controlled torrent.

“I slept in the cupboard under the stairs for ten years, and even though I did the cooking, they would restrict my meals as punishment. For when I was freakish. I mean, for when I did accidental magic. And Dudley and his friends used to beat me up whenever they got bored, which was often. Er, but after I turned eleven I didn’t have to live with them over anymore, ‘cept over the summer. So that’s okay. And now I’m here, so.”

Lily’s face is encrusted with freckles like barnacles on the hull of a ship. Those never quite came through in the photos. Harry wishes he had inherited them, like Geoff and Dahlia. Right now, they stand out starkly from her pale face, orange stars against a furious sky. “How long did you live with those people, Harry?”

“I was just a year old when you and dad died. So, er, almost fourteen years. Ten years before I went to Hogwarts, and then it was just the summers so that was okay. Long enough that they were the only family that I could remember. The earliest I can remember –” Harry bites his tongue. Lily doesn’t need to know that he remembers snippets of that night, that his only memory of her voice is a scream.

“How did we die, love?”

Harry opens his mouth to offer some sanitized answer, but the brand on the back of his neck warms and he can’t force the words out his throat.

“Rune won’t let you? That’s what I expected.” Lily pulls up her hair and turns to show him a rough red burn scar on the back of her own neck. “Charms Architecture works closely enough with the Department of Mysteries that we all get slapped with one of these sooner or later. I know how they function as well as anyone.

“I’m assuming we were killed by the Dark Lord of your reality. The report mentioned that, at least – that you had a Dark Lord. The major divergence between our two worlds was that yours got itself into a Light-Dark war that just… never happened here.”

Harry frowns, still rubbing his brand. “So what, after Grindelwald was defeated there was just… peace?”

“The years after he was killed were pretty unstable, at least in Britain, but after Dumbledore took the Minister’s office everything cooled down. Dumbledore seems to have a way with the old families, funny enough…”

“Maybe that’s what was different about my timeline. Dumbledore never –” the brand chokes him silent.

“What, he stayed at Hogwarts?” Lily fills in.

Harry nods eagerly.

“I told you, I’ve gotten good at figuring out what people are trying to say through those unspeak-seals,” says Lily with a smile. _That must be where Henry got his dimples from_ , Harry realizes. “I’ll save the rest of my questions for the Unspeakables. You should go to bed, sort out your rooming situation with Tom.”

Harry pauses, licking his lips.

“Dumbledore mentioned that you two might have trouble,” Lily sighs. “I won’t have that in my house, though, you understand? He’s just a kid now, even if you knew him as a sixty-something year old. If anything, get along with him to keep up your cover story, okay?”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” Harry says, hoarse in his honesty.

“You will,” says Lily. “If you’re anything like my Henry, you can make friends with a rock if you put your mind to it. I don’t think you’ll have trouble charming your roommate.”

“I’m not your son,” he admits, bowing his head, the words like glass creeping out of his throat. “I didn’t have friends until I got on the Hogwarts Express four years ago. And even if I could – charm rocks, or – well. Tom Riddle is –” _a monster that needs to be put down like a rabid wolf_ “– I don’t want to be friends –” _with the man who murdered you, and murdered Cedric, and ruined any chance I had of being like Henry – being good, and loved, and ‘charming’_. Harry’s finally getting used to the sensation of the brand’s furious throbbing.

Lily watches him, head tilted to the side. “Of _course_ you’re my son. Look at you, you’ve got my temper! Even if you weren’t, though, James and I swore an oath this morning before we took you in. You are under our solemn protection from right now until the day you turn seventeen. Tom, too. Under the law, the two of you are Potters. That does mean, though, that if you can’t treat Tom with respect, I will have to find alternative lodging for you.”

He meets her unfamiliar gray-green eyes. “I’ll do my best.”

At some point he had stood; now she rises too, giving him a hug. “I love you, okay? No matter if I’ve known you for a day or a lifetime. You’re still my son. Just remember: whatever he did, whatever he means to you, none of that exists anymore.”

He wonders how much she knows. The way she’s talking… perhaps Dumbledore told her. Perhaps she knows that she herself is breathing proof of Voldemort’s undoing. The scars etched into Harry’s right palm itch. He feels in freefall, torn from his broom; solid ground is somewhere beneath him, surely – if only he can tell which way is _up_.

***

All that flying after fifty hours of immobility has exhausted Harry so badly that he drops off to sleep before the sun even fully sets, offering Riddle barely a goodnight.

He wakes to the soft gray of early morning. Someone must have tucked him in, but he’s still wearing the same Weasley jumper and old jeans from the last day of term. Hopefully Henry will have some clothing for Harry to borrow.

The Potter’s guest bedroom is larger than Dudley’s second bedroom, where Harry had slept at the Dursleys. Two twin-sized beds with their heads against the left wall leave plenty of room for a pair of dressers, a desk, and a leaf-patterned rug. Riddle sleeps in the bed closest to the windows, his back to Harry.

As quietly as he can manage, Harry grabs his wand and slips out into the hallway. The house sits, silent and heavy, in the dawn. He prowls downstairs to the kitchen.

“Master Partridge! Good morning,” Harry startles as Rooke pops into existence before him, dipping into a bow.

Belatedly, he realizes she is talking to him. He bows back, smiling. “Good morning, Rooke.”

Rooke beams in obvious delight. “Would Master Partridge be liking some breakfast?”

“Er, yeah, that would be great. Could I maybe just have some eggs on toast with pumpkin juice?”

The little elf is just starting to pull out the bread when Harry hears a floorboard squeak and turns to see Riddle wandering down the stairs, scowling and bed headed.

“Would Master Riddle also like eggs on toast with pumpkin juice?” chirps Rooke.

Riddle yawns and attempts to smooth his hair. “Yes, please.” He sits down beside Harry, who remembers Lily’s warning and doesn’t shy away like he wants to.

“You’re an early riser too, then?” he asks, the awkwardness of silence finally overcoming the awkwardness of engaging Tom Riddle, of all people, in small talk.

“Just a light sleeper. I wake up whenever my roommates do.” He muffles another yawn in his plain gray pajama sleeve. “If this is your usual schedule, I’m going to need to start going to bed earlier.”

“My Quidditch team always used to practice in the early morning, and I, er, get up early in the summer, too. Sorry.”

“I’m more productive in the morning anyway, it’ll be good for me.”

They fall silent for a long time, then, to Harry’s relief. He stares out the window into the birch wood just beyond the flying field, wondering if unicorns might live there. He catches Riddle staring at him, all bony curiosity and terrible softness. A Dark Lord in pajamas. Who would’ve thought.

And then Rooke has finished with their food, and Harry is getting up to grab some hot sauce, and the sudden weight of all of this is crushing him – he’s thought, suddenly, of Ron, and whether _he_ might enjoy hot sauce. Hogwarts had never offered the stuff on the little spinning condiments bin that hurtled around during mealtimes, but Ron certainly enjoyed the spicy curry the elves offered the last Friday of each month.

Harry thinks, then, of S.P.E.W., and Hermione, and how she might like to talk to Rooke to see how her life in the Potter household is. He stabs an egg and tries to think about impaling Riddle’s eyes with his fork instead. This strategy works quite well for a while, until it occurs to Harry over a sip of pumpkin juice that _if there is an alternate Harry, there must be an alternate Ron and Hermione, too_. A Roonil and Hermygrande, perhaps, kicking around Gryffindor with Henry rather than Harry.

Before Harry can truly process this thought and decide whether he’s horrified or thrilled at the idea, he has to deal with the pumpkin juice now slopped down his front and the glee on Riddle’s pale face.

This is going to be a long day. Harry doesn’t even have a change of clothes to his name.

***

The Potter children – and James – come downstairs looking for breakfast around the same time Tom is starting to think he’s ready for lunch. _Early bird tendencies do not appear genetic_ , he notes in his diary. He is working on a list of things he thinks he knows about Harry Potter/Partridge. _High pain tolerance_ , reads the list, and _Orphaned as an infant_ , and _Freakishly good flier_ , and a dozen other things that Tom thinks might help crack Harry’s mystery.

Lily has been up for hours now; she and Harry are upstairs, chatting. Tom, feeling rather abandoned, has stayed in the kitchen, where he alternates between reading his history text and working on his rather excellent list. He had figured out at some point last night that his mental probes aren’t working on Harry, so old-fashioned detective work is the only thing for it. Tom had started to think, just a bit, that he might be losing his touch with mind magic, that time travel had somehow crushed away his natural gift with the art. Thing is, he can still read Harry’s _emotions_ , can still sense the ghostly imprints of his thoughts. He’s left to conclude that the Ministry brand on Harry’s neck is just blocking Tom’s Legilimency.

Dahlia, on the other hand – well. Tom can’t think what to make of her. His tiny, clever blind spot. He’s kind of resigned himself to letting her mystery go for the time being. Discovering her secrets feels so much less personal than Harry’s.

The Potters are digging delightedly into some pudding dish Rooke’s whipped up for them. Momentarily, James extricates himself from the mass of his children, dropping himself down by Tom and offering him a plate.

“G’morning, kiddo,” says James. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Harry? I was thinking I could take him down to Diagon and grab some basic necessities.”

Tom opens his mouth.

“Actually, d’you want to come, too? I’ll buy you anything you want, get you started off on the right foot.”

“Um, thank you, Mr. Potter, but I think I’ll wait until school lists come out in a month or two,” Tom wants to look around the birch forest today, and he really can’t be bothered to waste time watching Harry drool over racing brooms, or whatever, in Diagon. “Harry and Lily are in the garden, I think.”

“Just call me James, kiddo. No need for any of that formal nonsense.” James rapped on the table. “Hey, Henry! Can you and your friends play with Tom? He’s staying home for the day.”

Henry wheels around, fork stuck in his mouth. “Abshulootly!” he says, an enthusiastic spray of pudding crumbs coming out. He chews and swallows enough to give Tom a toothy smile that reminds him of Lily. “I owled them last night. They can’t _wait_ to meet you.”

Tom picks at his pudding – strawberry, and quite delicious – and tries to look unruffled and not at all terrified of Henry’s friends.

In the next few minutes, James manages to marshal the troops admirably. Tom is reminded that the man is an Auror, but he’s still impressed.

The Potters all sit themselves obediently down at the table, except for Lily, who, to poor Rooke’s displeasure, perches upon the kitchen counter. No more crumbs are spewed, though Geoffrey has notably terrible table manners.

Tom is complimenting James on the strawberries in the pudding – which have apparently come from the garden – when with a great _whoosh_ and a flare of green, a tall, well-dressed man is stepping out of the fireplace. A moment later, a less tall, less well-dressed man follows, brushing ash off his cloak.

James jumps to his feet, throwing his arms around the men in an embrace. “Sirius! Remus! Finally! Here, come sit down and meet Harry and Tom.”

Tom rises and shakes each of their hands, noting Sirius’s long pureblood nose and the thin scars lacing Remus’s face and neck. Lily conjures an extra chair for Sirius, but it goes unused as Geoff decides he must eat sitting on Sirius’s lap, whether he is fourteen years old or not.

The resulting whirlwind of more pudding and much shouting and Harry’s expression of numb joy is too much for Tom. He sits and quietly eats his brunch, planning his outing to the woods.

And then James whisks Harry and the two men off to Diagon, Lily wanders off trailing an absentminded path of petals from her wand, and Tom is left to the tender mercies of the three younger Potters.


	3. Lightsabers and Wildflowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry goes to Diagon, Tom meets Henry's friends, and tensions boil over.

Diagon Alley is just as Harry remembers: brilliant in the sunlight, crowded cobblestone streets, the taste of magic heavy and confused in the air. There’s a certain richness to it, in this other time; more people, maybe, but something more, some extra luster to the colors in the storefronts and the pitch of the crowd’s roar.

James leads the way through the crowd, all winning smile and broad Auror shoulders. People seem to know him, and their progress is slightly impeded by everyone who wants to talk to him, or shake his hand, or thank him for something or another. It’s strange for Harry to see this kind of adulation from the outside, the populace’s attention caught by someone other than he, himself.

Sirius stands at James’s shoulder, hands in his pockets, slouching a bit; carelessly, effortlessly handsome in a way Harry had only seen in photos. Professor Lupin is less gray and tired than he’d been at Hogwarts. He hangs back from the others to walk with Harry, and keeps turning to offer him reassuring smiles.

This all feels as strange as yesterday had, like Harry is in a dream, walking an inch above the ground, unreality nipping at his heels and threatening to pull him back to waking.

“James told us who you are,” says Lupin in an undertone as they pass Florescue’s.

Harry breathes in the vanilla scent of baking ice cream cones and looks at Lupin sideways, not quite sure what he means.

“That you’re Henry. Or a version of him, at least, who didn’t have your parents to look out for you.”

This sounds like an extreme breach of protocol. Spavin would be mortified. Harry habitually fiddles with the crop of hair over his scar, trying to hide it, then stops when he catches Lupin’s look of pity.

Lupin falls silent, and Harry feels, suddenly, that Diagon is claustrophobic and overwhelming, that he can’t quite breathe. He longs to be alone for a moment, without the tremendous wonder of family pressing around him, or the sleeping dragon of Riddle sat nearby. He can’t process any of this, not with this ever-increasing pressure of impossibilities piling onto his back.

There are shops Harry has never seen before, advertising things like _Custom Artifacts_ and _Derkowl’s Finest Pies_. James passes those by, leading them to Madam Malkin’s. Sirius and Lupin fall back to talk quietly together, and keep dropping heavy glances in Harry’s direction. James chats with the man working his shift, who outfits Harry in plain Hogwarts robes.

“No House crest?” Harry asks James. “I’m in Gryffindor.”

James beams. “You were? That’s brilliant, Harry, really. Don’t tell Henry, but I’ve never really gotten over my disappointment that he took after your mother… Anywho, Dumbledore’s going to have the Hat take another gander at you ‘n Tom, see if the wartime Sort was accurate.”

Harry is opening his mouth to say _what_ , at a completely inappropriate volume, when the clerk putters back in with an armful of Muggle clothing, and Harry is bustled off to find a pair of jeans that actually fits.

James, having bought an awful lot of clothing over Harry’s protests, shepherds them along to Flourish and Blott’s – Harry purchases _Flying with the Cannons_ and a book on jinxes. Then they’re on to Scribbulus for quills and ink; Harry notices a little display of Muggle ballpoints, and, mystified, grabs a couple of those, too.

Sirius drags them to Sugarplum’s Sweets, a quaint little store where Harry has never been before. Lupin buys Harry more chocolate than he could eat in a month, though Sirius insists on paying. They go to Quality Quidditch Supplies just to gawk at the newest brooms, and somehow Harry ends up walking away with a new handle cleaning set and arm- and leg-guards.

Even shrunk, all Harry’s new things are enough to nearly fill the sack Lupin has flung over his shoulder, and Harry can’t stop himself from saying _thank you_ , over and over again. James just ruffles his hair.

Sirius pulls his sleeve back to consult his watch, blinks twice, and makes his goodbyes, giving Lupin a quick peck before Disapparating.

“Probably had a meeting he was late for,” James adjusts his glasses with a sigh. “Honestly, if this is how he is with you looking out for him, Remus, I don’t know what he’d do left to his own devices.”

“I keep thinking this thing with Regulus is just a phase,” Lupin says. “You know how Sirius is… but they’ve had this arrangement for, what, over a year now? And I think Sirius actually likes it. Seeing his brother, buttering up politicians.”

James turns to Harry. “Your uncle Sirius is helping his brother Regulus out with his work on the Wizengamot. The two of them are nigh-on unstoppable when they’re in agreement over something, and they’ve been using that to start repairing some of the damage their ancestors – and Bella, of course – have done to the Black name.”

“Okay,” says Harry readily, shoving this tidbit onto the crammed shelf of things-to-examine-later in his mind. “Are we going to head home, then? I think I’ve all the stuff I need until book lists come out.”

“One more thing,” James exchanges a look with Lupin, then guides Harry through the crowd.

They stop in front of Eeylops Owl Emporium, in all its cacophonous glory. The scent inside is heavy and familiar, and Harry feels the emptiness from earlier flood back in a rush. Hedwig is gone. He’ll likely never see his owl again.

Harry scans the tall ceilings of Eeylops for a flash of snowy plumage, the glint of yellowy eyes.

The elderly clerk – Eeylops himself? – steps forward to shake James’s hand. He gestures behind himself to a row of cages, all regal Great Horneds and stoic Barns. Harry is angry, suddenly and impotently, at these birds. Do they think they might ever replace Hedwig? They – well. They’re just owls; this whole debacle isn't their fault. He bites his lip and breathes the way Wood taught him to do before matches, deep and full, inflating his diaphragm and releasing through his mouth.

“What’d’you think, fawn?” says James, gesturing to an owl. Harry’s unfounded irritation and breathing exercises fly away in a burst of laughter. The owl has bright yellowy eyes, like Hedwig, under ear tufts sitting long and dark on its head. It turns to him, all surprise and sternness, pulling itself up in liquidy disdain. “Apparently she’s got exceptional flight endurance, great for flights up and down the country. And she’s young, still – she’ll serve you for a while yet even after you graduate.”

The ridiculous owl shuffles from side to side, tufts bobbing, ever-shocked eyes trained unerringly on Harry. She’s not Hedwig, but she’s lovely in her own way. “Can I meet her?” says Harry.

As soon as the elderly clerk undoes the owl’s cage, she wings her way off the perch and onto Harry’s outstretched arm, shuffles up to his shoulder, and contorts to look him straight in the face.

“British Long-eared Owls,” says the clerk, chuckling awkwardly. “They tend to be a bit odd, but they, er. They get the job done.”

“She’s wonderful,” says Harry, a bit offended by the insinuation that _oddness_ is bad.

And settles things. Laughing, James pays for the bird and some owl treats, Lupin Disapparates off to Sirius’s side, and Harry and James pop out of the pet shop and appear in front of the Potter estate. The owl has gone puffy and irritable with the gut-twisting sensation of Apparition, and Harry can’t help but giggle at her.

***

Tom had been wary of Henry, before he met his friends. Now he’s just terrified.

First comes a boy with sleek white-blonde hair, stepping through the Floo with the kind of arrogance that seems bred into the old families, the kind of arrogance Tom has spent the past four years striving desperately to emulate. He straightens his robes with practiced grace, smoothing ash off his shoulders. He’s all long nose, pointy chin, wide forehead, pureblood in every feature, but when he sees Henry that all melts away a bit.

“Draco!” says Henry, reaching out and ending up with his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “I think I’ve missed you, you git.”

Draco’s pale ears pink momentarily, but a heartbeat later he’s stepping towards Tom, brushing Henry aside just as he had the ash. “I certainly haven’t missed _you_ , Potter, you idiot, it’s been hardly sixty hours.” And then, to Tom, “so, you’re the time-traveler?”

“A pleasure,” says Tom, because he might not _be_ a pureblood, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t know how to deal with them. “Tom Riddle,” he says, shaking Draco’s hand while trying to look tall and charming.

“Draco Malfoy.”

“Related to Abraxas Malfoy, I presume. How _is_ he getting on these days? The two of us were in Slytherin together.” Tom tries to turn his stare into a look of polite interest as he inspects Draco, and yes: he can see Abraxas in this boy, in his hands and eyes and the ghosts of freckles on his nose. Draco’s own mind is empty of recognition – but what did Tom expect? That Abraxas had gone around, decades after Tom was long gone, telling stories about a younger boy who was Muggleborn, sure, but also _oh-so-talented_? Ludicrous.

“Grandfather passed away last November,” says Draco, frowning.

Before Tom can offer his condolences, the fire sparks green again, spitting out a black girl with bushy hair and the dark, clever eyes of a sparrow. Henry catches her hand to steady her, and she pivots to hug him. “Henry! It’s so good to see you.”

“You two are such saps,” Draco’s lip curls. “Anyone might think you’d been torn apart for years, pining all the while…” But then the girl’s hugging him, too, and Draco’s laughing.

Tom exchanges a look with Geoffrey, who is waiting for his own friends to pile on through. “They’re always like this,” Geoff says in a mock-whisper. “Since first year. None of them had ever met another nerd before, and they _imprinted_ on each other.”

Draco is now brandishing a piece of paper like a stage prop as the girl giggles and Henry rolls his eyes. “Hermione thinks the Malfoy London House is ‘boring.’ I swear, the woman’s just using me for my fireplace!” Draco attempts to swoon into Henry’s arms, but Henry steps backwards and leaves him flailing.

“It’s a bit gross, isn’t it?” says Geoffrey to Tom.

The girl turns, seeing Tom for the first time. Her expression as she steps toward him, hand out for the shaking, is borderline predatory. “I’m Hermione Granger.”

Tom takes her hand, smiling to hide his genuine concern that she might eat him. “Glad to meet you, Hermione. I’m Tom Riddle.”

“C’mon, Tom,” says Henry over his shoulder, wandering upstairs. Hermione, not relinquishing her grip on Tom’s hand, drags him upstairs as Draco trails in Henry’s wake.

Hermione drops Tom in an armchair and sits herself on the couch across the Potter’s low coffee table. Henry and Draco flank her on the couch.

With some difficulty, Tom summons back his usual icy composure. He finds the handle of his wand in his pant pocket and breathes a bit easier. Whoever these people think they are, none of their weird future magic and shared ‘nerdiness’ – whatever that means – can stand against Tom.

Henry very cheerfully grabs a dog-eared notebook up off the coffee table, Draco pulls out the parchment from his earlier production, and Hermione leans forward, somehow managing to look both very friendly and very threatening.

Tom, trying to ignore the list of hexes his brain is suggesting, leans back into the plush armchair, crossing his legs and trying to do that blank face that Gideon Nott calls ‘kinda hot, but mostly scary.’ It works on Draco, at least, which makes Tom feel a bit better about the whole situation.

“So,” says Henry. “Yes, this is an interrogation, but don’t let that stress you out. We’re just trying to understand how time travel works in Hogwarts. Did you know, the previous longest instance was back in the 1800s? A student slipped forwards fourteen years. And here you are, having been gone _five_ _decades_. You were officially declared dead back in the fifties, Tom, and yet here you are! It’s a truly fascinating case study –”

“I think he knows his case is an outlier, Henry,” Hermione flicks a mass of hair over her shoulders. “Tom, we’d love to hear about what happened from your perspective. All we know is that little Dennis Creevey found what he thought were two corpses on the seventh floor and woke up half the school before a teacher got involved. And then, of course, you’re _here_ , so there’s that. But all they told the student body was that two kids had had an accident with time travel and the Ministry was taking care of it.”

“I’d like to tell you all about the entire endeavor,” says Tom apologetically, “but I’ve a feeling the Unspeakables wouldn’t fancy me leaking Ministry secrets to a bunch of teenagers.”

Henry scoffs. “If they didn’t bother slapping you with an unspeak-seal, they don’t actually care what you say. If you’re just traveling from the past, you’re not exactly carrying a bunch of state secrets around in your brain.”

“If you’re worried about telling us about the secret of the seventh floor, you needn’t bother,” drawls Draco. “We figured out the Come-and-Go Room back in second year, when ‘Mione went a bit mad and decided she needed to work on her potioneering, but didn’t want to deal with Sluggy and his dungeons.”

“Essays and classwork aren’t _enough_ in that class,” says Hermione, “and the Slytherins kept beating us to the points!”

“That’s because Slughorn is a moldy old lug,” says Henry, “he only awards the other Houses points if Slytherin is firmly in the lead for the Cup.”

“I always rather liked Slughorn,” Tom interjects, a bit offended. “Weird to think that he’s still teaching, though. The man’s got to be over a century old now.”

“You were probably a Slytherin, though, right, Tom?” says Draco.

“I don’t form my opinion on teachers based on how many _points_ they award me.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” says Hermione, scowling, but at the same moment a commotion starts up downstairs, and they all fall silent.

“Who all did Geoffrey invite over? That sounds like Ron,” says Draco after a moment.

“Huh,” says Henry, and then Tom must miss some kind of signal, because Henry and the others rise in perfect unison and thunder off downstairs to bear witness to whatever fresh horror has just scrambled out of the Floo.

Tom gives himself ten heartbeat’s rest, then forces himself to follow them to the Floo receiving room, where he finds not one, but _four_ new children, all talking at each other and gesturing excitedly.

A gangly boy with hair more orange than Lily’s and eyes like the summer sky is talking to Henry; he is the first to spot Tom, and immediately breaks into some excited gesturing of his own. “Tom Riddle!” he calls over the cacophony of Geoff, a red-headed girl, and a dark-skinned boy screaming happily at each other about the recent Hollyhead Harpies game.

Henry turns to the gangly boy and says something Tom doesn’t catch, and then the four older kids are gesturing for Tom to follow them out to the yard. A girl Tom hadn’t noticed before, wispy and golden-haired, follows them out.

Henry, Hermione, Draco, and the other boy sprawl out in a sunny spot on the grass. Tom sits gingerly down near them, feeling very aware of _sunburn risk_ and _grass stains_ and all that rot he usually rolls his eyes at. He just wants an excuse to get away from Hermione’s questions, and Henry’s little notebook, and Draco’s weird, pretty, eyes.

“I’m Ron Weasley,” says the new boy, smiling, and Tom stares at the freckles on the skin around his eyes for a moment before collecting himself and giving Ron a firm handshake. “And this is Luna Lovegood,” he adds kindly, nodding toward the strange girl, who has settled herself between Hermione and Draco.

Luna blinks huge eyes. Tom tries to catch them with his own, see into her mind, but she looks away, a frown playing at the corners of her mouth. “Hello, Tom,” she says, then whispers, loudly, “be careful of that one,” in Hermione’s ear. And then she’s waltzing back inside again, saying, “I need to go talk with Dahlia,” and humming a snatch of a song that Tom, somehow, recognizes.

“Who _is_ she?” Tom finds himself saying.

“We’re still trying to figure that out. Kind of a wonder, though, yeah?” Henry looks mostly fond.

Ron leans forward, knotting his hands in the grass. “Luna’s not the point, though. Ginny said that Geoff said that you’re one of the kids that got themselves screwed over by time magic.”

“That’s right,” says Tom, wary.

Draco makes a very un-aristocratic noise of interest and points emphatically at Tom’s poor mangled hand, which he’d started fiddling with. “Are those scars from the time travel? Henry, is there precedent for that? Do you figure it’s fallout from how far he traveled?”

Henry makes to touch Tom’s hand and inspect it, but Tom pulls it back sharply, scowling as fiercely as he can muster. Henry sits back, frowning, but just says, “I don’t understand why it’s so localized, is all. Tom, were you holding an object or something that sent you forward?”

“Oh!” says Hermione. “Was it from that one mad room – with all that _stuff_ – remember, Henry, where I hid the –” she glances between Tom and Ron. “Where I hid the thing.”

Tom cradles his hand to his chest, hating how completely his composure has fled him.

“Does it hurt?” says Draco.

“Not much anymore,” says Tom, but lets the hand go so he can use it to tidy his hair a bit. “I’m glad my left is my dominant, though.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Henry says, performing an irritated gesture with his quill, poised to write on a clean page of his grubby notebook. A drop of ink flies off the quill, splattering perfectly on Draco’s pale cheek. “Sorry,” says Henry, failing to hide a smirk.

Unfortunately for Henry, that ink splotch devolves rapidly into a wrestling match with Draco, and his line of questioning falls into the grassy field alongside his quill.

“This happens an awful lot,” confides Ron to Tom. “Draco always forgets he’s allergic to grass, and Henry kind of gets off on seeing him with a runny nose.”

“Charming,” says Tom as judgmentally as possible.

“I quite think so. Draco needs someone to bring him down a couple pegs.”

In that moment, Harry and James Apparate home, a Long-eared Owl in tow, and Henry sits up, leaving off tickling Draco. Draco’s hair is in complete disarray, all messy and full of grass, and the ink has smeared all the way from the corner of his nose to the edge of his browbone. He sneezes.

“Mr. Potter,” says Tom. _Thank god you’re home. Please never leave me alone with them again_.

Harry, on the other side of the yard, sits on the ground and unlatches the door on his owl’s cage. It explodes out of its confines, settling contentedly on his dark head. Harry beams as it begins grooming his messy bangs, baring that lightning-bolt scar on his forehead.

Tom groans. Geoffrey, Quidditch madness and all, may well be the sanest person in this household. Perhaps that is the scariest thought of all.

***

Harry closes his eyes to his owl’s gentle efforts to coax his hair into even more of a bird’s nest. He doesn’t want to deal with Tom Riddle right now, not after the nice morning he’s had. He especially doesn’t want to deal with whatever is going on in the grass behind Riddle; turns out the prospect of a Ron and Hermione who don’t know him at all is actually quite painful.

“Want to grab a bite to eat, sport?” James says.

Harry squints up at him against the bright blue sky. “I’nnit like three o’clock?”

“Potters eat when we’re _hungry_! And I’m bloody starving. Collect that lot and meet me inside, okay? I’m going to ask Rooke to whip something up and get all your new stuff put away in one of your grandpa’s old trunks.”

James nearly ruffles Harry’s hair, but the owl has grown quite possessive of his scalp, so he just saunters back into the house, whistling tunelessly.

The owl flaps indignantly as Harry pulls himself to his feet. This is very much not the ideal first impression on his best friends. He slouches in their direction anyway, hoping the pumpkin juice stain from this morning isn’t showing on his green Weasley jumper.

He needn’t have worried; Ron jumps readily to his feet, all limbs and freckles and smile, and Harry finds himself charmed all over again by this boy. “You must be Harry Partridge,” says Ron, seizing his hand and shaking it. _That’s not my name_ , Harry thinks, heart sinking, as Ron continues, “I’m Ron Weasley. It’s excellent to meet you. Who’s your owl?”

“Er, I haven’t quite named her yet. Actually just bought her, like, five minutes ago.”

Ron squints at him. “Say, are the Partridges and the Potters related?”

“Ah,” says Harry, not sure if he ought to be panicking. Trust Ron to see through him within a minute, honestly. “Because of the hair, or the skin color?”

“I suppose both? And the eyebrows and mouth and voice and – maybe this is weird, but the wrists. You just remind me of Henry.”

“Huh,” Harry says, shrugging. Riddle has come over to lurk – well, so have Henry and Hermione and – who is that disheveled blonde boy?

“Any relation to the Parkinson’s? You’ve got Pansy’s nose.”

Harry’s hand flies to his nose.

The blonde boy – it’s Malfoy, of _course_ it’s Malfoy – frowns. “That’s creepy, Ron, you’re right. Merlin, it’s like some idiot pasted Pansy’s nose on Henry’s face and sent the result off to live among the rest of us mortals.”

This is offensive, and Harry is just about ready to jinx Malfoy for it, Trace or no. Before he can pull out his wand, Tom interjects cleanly, looking supremely bored and still very creepy. “Perhaps the Partridges married into the Parkinson family while we were – ah, _in transit_. We’ll have to consult the genealogy records, hmm? And really, he looks nothing like Henry.”

“Too shrimpy,” Malfoy agrees with a mean little grin. The expression is far less effective given the grass in his hair. “Perhaps terrible hair is just a side effect of overindulging one’s postal owl.”

Henry scowls, so Harry assumes this is meant to be a dig at him. “Flurry deserves the world. Who am I to deny her anything?”

“Er, anyway, I was meant to tell you all that it’s lunchtime,” Harry says, interrupting the argument shaping up between Malfoy and Henry. It’s beginning to dawn on Harry that those two are _friends_ , which is so deeply disturbing that he can’t be reasonably expected to deal with it.

The prospect of food is enough to momentarily erase their petty squabbles. As they head inside, Hermione hangs back a bit. “Hey,” she says, brown eyes warm as ever. “I’m Hermione Granger. I’ve read first-hand accounts from time-travelers, and I know this is a big adjustment. If you ever need someone to talk to or answer questions about 1995, I’m here.” Her expression turns a bit crafty. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me anything about how exactly you and Tom ended up in this time?”

Harry shows her the brand on the back of his neck. “Sorry, Hermione.”

“Oh! Well, that’s not normal protocol, now is it?”

“Um.”

Rooke has made a barley soup with thick, cheesy bread for lunch. Harry keeps sending Hermione sidelong glances, but she makes no mention of S.P.E.W.-ish activities, opting instead just to thank Rooke for the meal. Harry, despite himself, finds himself missing his own Hermione.

The younger kids – Geoffrey, Ginny, Dahlia, and an unfamiliar girl and boy – insist that they eat in the basement because of something to do with ‘lifesavers.’ Harry can’t tell whether they mean the kind that goes in the water or the kind that goes in one’s mouth, but he takes Henry’s excitement over the matter as an endorsement and follows the crowd downstairs, into a room that’s all plush carpeting and oversized pillows.

Harry chooses a spot in the corner, and the tray of lunch that Rooke has enchanted to follow him settles down beside him. The owl, which had been perched happily on his shoulder, abandons him to sit, instead, on Riddle’s knee.

Harry jumps. “I didn’t see you there.”

Riddle frowns at the bird and offers it a scratch under its beak. “Sorry to startle you.” He does not sound sorry. Harry wishes Riddle would sit anywhere in the room that _isn’t_ right next to him, but saying so risks incurring Lily’s wrath.

In the middle of the room, Henry and Geoff are busy fumbling with some sort of device. Henry keeps getting his wand out, then seeming to remember it’s summertime and stowing it back in his pocket.

“Hermione, er, what is that?” says Harry, because she did offer to explain stuff to him.

She turns. “It’s a projector. Sort of a thing Muggles use to show movies – d’you know movies? Yeah. Well, it’s that, but heavily altered with magic. The Potter’s one is a bit of antique, finicky… actually, I’d best go help the boys get it moving.”

Hermione’s aid does not turn out to be helpful; she just manages to get the projector device to start emitting a strong smell of honeydew melon. Henry sits back, letting her at it.

“Hey, Henry,” says Harry, remembering James’s comment from earlier, “what House are you in?”

“At Hogwarts? Me’n Draco ‘n Hermione are in Ravenclaw, like Mum was.”

It’s not unexpected, but it is – strange. Harry opens his mouth to say something inane when the projector clunks to life. The girl Harry doesn’t know, with the flyaway gold hair, has shoved Hermione aside and managed to get the contraption working.

The scent of honeydew changes to a more subtle lavender smell, and the room explodes with the sound of a brass chorus. Geoff and Ginny emit identical noises of high-pitched delight.

‘ _It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire_ ,’ reads a screen that has sparked to life on the wall across from the projector. ‘ _Are you paying attention, children? Stop screaming, you won’t be able to hear the soundtrack. Anyway, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon…_ ’

It turns out that the kids had been talking about ‘lightsabers’, not ‘lifesavers.’ Star Wars is one of those stories that other children had played at during recess at Harry’s old primary school. The movie is fine enough, but he can’t properly enjoy it. He keeps thinking about Dudley and his love of lasers.

Harry is far more entertained by watching _Riddle_ watch the movie. Riddle is not an expressive person by any stretch of the imagination, but the way he bites his lips during gunfights and fiddles with the owl’s feathers during the climax speaks volumes. He’s is so invested in the silly movie that he doesn’t notice Harry noticing him, and his soup goes cold on its tray.

“How’d you like it?” asks Geoff afterwards.

“The future is _neat_ ,” says Riddle guilelessly, and it’s so out-of-character for him that Harry’s heart squeezes painfully.

“Yeah,” says Harry. “Um. Very… neat.”

“Damocles!” Geoff calls. “Let’s teach ‘em all how to play Death-Star-Death-Match-Broom-Battle Extravaganza!”

Henry, sitting on a beanbag chair with Malfoy, sighs. “Can you believe the two of us are _both_ fourteen? Surely he’s not mature enough to be the same age as me.”

“Well,” says Malfoy, “as a fifteen-year-old, I do humbly declare that, er, Death-Star-Death – er, Broom Fight? – is an excellent and perfectly mature way to spend an evening.”

“Seconded,” Ron beams.

Geoff, Ginny, and the boy Harry doesn’t know cheer, Henry and Hermione share a commiserating glance, and the strange golden-haired girl leads the others all off the broom shed.

The silence echoes for a moment in the near-empty room.

“Your owl,” Riddle offers, handing her over. “Does she have a name yet?”

“Death Star,” Harry says, smiling into the owl’s round eyes. She looks just as affronted by this as by everything else, which he takes as agreement.

“Dear Lord,” says Riddle. Harry can’t seem to get used to his style of sacrilegious Muggle cursing. “That’s horrible, Harry, you can’t name her _Death Star_. If you’ve got to name her after a spaceship, why not Millennium? Hell, why not Leia?”

“I like Death Star,” Harry says firmly. Death Star ruffles her feathers. “And so does she.”

“You –” Riddle’s eyes have gone all funny and warm, half his overgrown hair spilling into them.

Harry can’t look at him anymore; seeing Riddle like this, all human and real, is driving him into an existential terror he can’t handle right now.

Death Star squawks as Harry sweeps abruptly from the tiny cinema room, leaving Tom alone in the silence.

Geoff’s friend, who Harry learns is named Damocles Gore, assigns Harry to the Empire team.

Death-Star-Death-Match-Broom-Battle Extravaganza is a lot like four-person hoopless Quidditch in that it involves a lot of Geoffrey’s ‘new rules’ and biased refereeing, but with the addition of ‘home bases’ and mock-lasers. None of them have the slightest idea what they’re meant to be doing, but Harry is happy to just lose himself in flight, letting the wind snatch tears from his eyes and free him momentarily from the strangeness of this otherworld.

Riddle watches them from the tree line, reading a history text just as he had the last night. Harry is keeping half an eye on him – that’s the thing to do, when _Tom Riddle_ is on the loose. So Harry sees when he lays down his book and, stretching, sneaks off into the woods.

Harry makes some distracted excuse to the others and hurtles off, stowing his Nimbus and new safety gear in the shed. There’s no way he’s leaving Riddle unsupervised. The last time he did that, Riddle just about _ate_ Ginny and Harry had ended up with a great venomous fang jutting out of his arm.

***

The birch wood is a world away from the Potter’s yard, filled with delicate leafy shadows and a chill that heralds evening. Tom slips through the trees, boots laced over his shoulder, the feeling of dirt between his toes centering him.

This forest is magical. Not as old as the Dark Forest, perhaps, but wilder by far than the tiny wood behind the orphanage where Tom had first learned to speak with snakes.

“ _Hello_?” he hisses in Parseltongue, falling still and closing his eyes to better hear. There are always snakes around, lurking unseen, listening and waiting – for mice, most of the time, but Tom finds that they can be easily persuaded to target humans.

“ _Hello_ ,” someone answers. Tom looks down to see a little garter snake. “ _You are a bad-not-mate-with snake. No scales. Bad_.”

“ _I’m a human, not a snake_ ,” says Tom, kneeling down. It must be very young. “ _I am not for mating with. And I don’t have scales, but I do have heat under my skin_.”

The snake’s tongue flickers. “ _Show me the heat_.”

Tom lets the snake hitch a ride around his neck, where it promptly falls asleep.

His feet carry him lightly through the forest, buoyed by thoughts of space battles and a boy carrying the legacy of a Jedi father.

As he moves into the deeper parts of the woods, Tom feels the forest’s magic knot around his bones, heavy on the air. The scars on his right hand pulse in rhythm with the swaying of the birches above. Tom knows, intellectually, that it the sun is still at least three hours from setting, but there’s a dusky quality to the shadows, and the sky seems so distant.

A force steals over Tom; he feels it on his tongue, iron and sage, heady and familiar. His footsteps fall into beat, and he breathes in the taste of this place’s ancient magic. No wonder he’d been drawn to these woods: they are so much older than he had first thought.

“ _NOPE_ ,” says the little snake, uncoiling from his neck and dropping to the forest floor. Tom barely notices it slither off in the other direction, so caught up is he in the forest. He can feel it now, the same soft melody Luna had been humming, a cousin to the one he remembers.

The white oak’s grove stands on top of a little hill carved by a stream. The water runs pure and light, burbling in time with the song whispered by the trees, the beat thumping through Tom’s own body. The sun penetrates the trees once again, sending golden patches of light dancing over the forest floor, illuminating patches of wildflowers shaped like tiny stars.

The oaks call Tom over the stream; he’s tensing himself to jump, knowing they’ll guide his body –

“What the actual _fuck_ ,” says a voice, “are you doing?”

The music in Tom’s mind trails off, and the river carries onward, whisking the melody away from him. “Harry Potter,” he says, because of course it’s him. Harry is glaring at Tom. Someone really ought to tell him that expression doesn’t quite work on his glamoured face. “You really shouldn’t be here.”

“What are you doing, Riddle? What is this place?” Harry’s face may not be scary, but the texture of his mind is. Tom senses his hatred again, the smoldering fury lurking behind his gray-glamoured eyes. Tom had thought, this morning over breakfast and in the aftermath of _Star Wars_ , that the hatred had fallen back, giving way to the generalized confusion that appears to be Harry’s natural state, but something here in the heart of the woods has it flaring up again.

Tom looks away, lest he be burned. “Look, _Partridge_ ,” he says, remembering himself. “This place is sacred. Ancient. Surely you can feel it? It’s not safe for you here.”

“That’s not my name,” Harry says venomously. “And as if _you’d_ know what’s sacred, you fucking _reptile_.”

“‘As if I’d know what’s _sacred’_?” Tom, incensed, rips his rosary out from under his shirt. “I was raised in an orphanage that had a Catholic church literally attached to it, you utter imbecile. I was raised on ideals of sanctity. Don’t – don’t pretend you know me. _You know nothing_.”

Harry laughs wildly. Tom has a moment of river-cold clarity, thinks that perhaps this whole time-traveling/dimension-hopping lark has perhaps done a bit of damage to each of their psyches, but then he’s back to just wanting to hurt this ridiculous, scarred boy.

“I know you better than anyone in this sideways timeline. Better than you know yourself, certainly. You –” Harry gags, spits. Tom stares.

He feels the chill of truth in those words – Tom doesn’t understand the things he’d seen in Harry’s mind before the Ministry shielded his thoughts, but there it is. Harry had known Tom as an adult, somehow. _A mask – a face? Eyes burning red, veins green at the temples, flat and reptilian_. No.

“So what, you’re Catholic? Don’t make me laugh.”

“I told you, I know what’s sacred.” Tom tosses the rosary to the forest floor. “That's what's sacred at the orphanage. I’ve found it’s harder for people to accuse me of being _possessed_ if I’m wearing a crucifix.”

Harry snarls, like something’s blocking his throat. _The unspeak-seal_ , Tom realizes – and then Harry’s face is contorting in frustration, his wand striking like a viper, rapid and deadly.

Tom laughs, high and cold, and leaps forward; his wand has been in his hand this whole time, vibrating with anticipation of the fight. It’s seemed inevitable, really, since they locked eyes over the threshold of the Room of Requirement. Harry sends _Expelliarmus_ , _Stupefy_ , _Impedimenta_ ; low-level spells, nothing really threatening, and Tom falls easily into his usual dueling style, just dodging and looking for weakness.

Simon Avery had always loved watching Tom duel. He’d taught Tom the etiquette himself, but the dance of it, the fighting, had come so naturally that soon Tom was beating Simon four times out of five, then nine out of ten, and then… well. Tom had been unbeatable since third year.

With Harry, though, his usual tricks aren’t working; Tom tries to play with him, lure him into a rhythm, but he’s too chaotic. Tom hasn’t thrown any spells yet, he’s waiting to understand Harry, but he can’t lock onto his patterns. Sweeping onto the offensive, Tom tries to catch an _Expelliarmus_ on the tip of his wand to hurl it back. People never expect that trick – Simon says it’s really hard to pull off, but Tom can do it consistently.

The spell whizzes by too quickly, leaving Tom’s wand vibrating with the force of it. He swallows, nervous: _Expelliarmus_ doesn’t usually pack that kind of punch. He fires back, pulling the pigment from the grass around him and lobbing it at Harry in little knife-like spears. Harry conjures the shield charm, and in the moment after it drops Tom sees reflected in his face Tom’s own savage joy.

Harry whips his wand into the movement for _Stupefy_. Tom casts _Protego_ just in time to halt the jet of roiling purple light, and then he’s moving, summoning a flock of toothy geese to distract Harry, rolling to the ground and stowing his wand, touching the ground – there it is, the heartbeat of the forest, pounding faster in time with the adrenaline of the battle.

Tom grips the mossy dirt, concentrates, and is rewarded by a low yell – he sprints out to see Harry, trussed up and goose-pecked, the star-shaped wildflowers having grown high and strong around his limbs. Tom grins fiercely, then remembers himself and stops.

“ _Expelliarmus_ ,” Tom says, lazy and cool to hide the wild pounding of his heart. Harry may be magically powerful, but he completely lacks finesse; it had been inevitable that Tom take him down, especially here, with the forest on his side.

“ _Expelliarmus_ ,” Harry hisses in the same moment, the plants immobilizing his right side falling away into ash – and _his_ spell is far from lazy. Their two jinxes meet in the air between them, and Tom’s wand sings, and the song of the forest rises in harmony with it.

The air seethes with magic, golden and fiery as the sun high above the canopy, and Tom is suddenly afraid, because _he doesn’t understand_.

There’s something coalescing between the thick ribbon of gold light connecting their wands, like drops of dew on a copper wire. As they slide towards Tom, his wand trembles, its song growing darker and faster. He channels more magic through it, gritting his teeth.

Harry’s wildflower bonds have disintegrated completely. His teeth are not gritted. He doesn’t even look angry anymore, just eerily calm and utterly focused. _He is stronger than me_ , realizes Tom, panicked. _He will win this fight_.

Tom wrenches his left hand up with all his strength, and the connection snaps abruptly. His wand tears itself from his hand. Harry catches it neatly.

He considers Tom’s long white wand for a moment, then holds it out by the handle. Reluctantly, Tom paces forward to take it. He hides his shivering hands behind his back. “What was that? I’ve never –”

Harry turns from him. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Just – if the Ministry tries to expel us over this, it’s your fault, understand?”

He leaves then, and Tom sits on the forest floor. Their short duel has left the clearing burnt and discolored, the ground ripped up in places.

Tom finds his rosary glinting by the streambed and fastens it back around his neck without knowing quite why. Then he pours what remains of his tattered magic into the wildflowers, and as he slips into sleep, they grow tall around him, shielding him from the light of the setting sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not quite sure what the Star Wars stuff came from. I looked up movies that nineties kids might be watching, and there it was. Tom (at this point in his life) strikes me as the kind of person that would resonate with Luke's story.
> 
> I edited the first chapter to include some art that won't make any sense until chapter 5. Not sure if it's weird to post stuff like that on a fic, but I thought it might be fun to try it out!


	4. July

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snapple puts in an appearance, Henry and Geoff try to mend the rift between Harry and Tom, and the Potters throw a birthday party.

Tom wakes in the forest, slivers of a dawn-bleached sky high above him. He sits up, feeling dew in his hair and an ache throbbing at his temples. Around him, the star-shaped wildflowers grow easily two feet tall, clustered like offerings at the foot of a casket.

The stream whispers by his feet, tuneless. No wind tosses the birch branches above his head. The white oaks still stand across the bank, but their call has gone silent. Swallowing shame, Tom casts spells to dry himself, straighten out his clothing, order his hair.

His trek through the woods feels so much longer than it had the first time. Tom sees things at the corners of his vision, shadowy creatures lingering in the dawn. He holds his yew wand in a tight grip, and none of them venture close.

When he finally stumbles into the Potter house, he finds Lily and James waiting for him, sitting at the kitchen table with dark circles under their eyes. They fuss, and exclaim in joy, and bundle him back into his room for rest.

Harry, in the other bed, feigns sleep, but Tom sees him watching through slit gray eyes.

Tom comes down with a cold the next day, which Lily says is to be expected for time travelers – something about diseases mutating and lack of resistance – and that sleeping out in the cold and damp hadn’t helped matters.

He spends the first part of July reading the Potter’s entire stash of modern history books, staring out into the birch wood, and waiting for the weight of the Ministry to crash down on he and Harry for their little duel.

But the Ministry never comes, and Tom’s cold turns into a truly horrible case of the flu that has him quarantined in the bedroom. Harry moves next door to Sirius’s and Remus’s old room, which Tom knows is a relief for all parties involved. He and Harry haven’t been talking.

Finished with the history books – the Muggles had gone to the moon, and Tom _missed_ it – he starts researching wand lore, searching desperately for some explanation for what had happened in the woods. All he learns is that yew wands and Dark wizards tend to favor each other, but he hadn’t needed a book to tell him that.

Though Dahlia and Henry are sweet to Tom, bringing him up meals and seeking him out when they need homework help, Tom finds himself spending most of his time with Geoffrey. They watch the other two Star Wars movies together.

“How’d’you like that?” Geoff asks as Luke, onscreen, flexes his new mechanical arm. He knows how invested Tom had been in Anakin’s identity.

Tom stops gaping at the screen. “It wasn’t what I had expected, that’s for sure. Vader and Anakin, one and the same.”

Geoff cackles. Death Star, who has taken to sitting with Tom through his long illness, does her best to mess up Tom’s poor hair, which honestly does need a cut quite badly.

It’s nice. To have someone to be around, who wants to hang out with Tom just _because_ , with no sneaking political agenda. Well – it’s boring, too, but he finds he doesn’t much mind. He sees, now, the appeal of Gryffindors. And, perhaps, puppies.

But throughout July, Tom busies himself with plotting. This whole time travel situation had seemed like a setback at first, but now he sees he can use it to his own advantage. He’d spent his first four years at Hogwarts shadowed by his blood status. Now, with his name attached to the Potters and bearing a reputation for slipping through time from the forties, he will be associated with wealth, a pureblood family, and the novelty of an origin in the past.

He has all the pieces to secure his future, and he knows he will inevitably carry the Mantle. Now it’s just a question of recruiting valuable allies and taking the full measure of the current political climate, both tasks to be tackled at Hogwarts. For the first time he can really remember, Tom lets himself relax, of only for the moment.

And then, almost three weeks after his spat with Harry, the oaks call to him again.

Tom leaves the house a bit past dawn, slipping out through the front door. He hears Harry in the kitchen laughing over something with Rooke, but neither of them notices him.

The morning is cloudy and hushed. The birch wood, wet with dew, opens up before Tom’s feet. He turns to the house, with its cold gray cobbles and fireplaces now gone still.

The song of the oak trees hangs on the air. Tom catches it in his throat, hums it as he lets the wood envelop him again.

***

Severus Snape stops by for a visit on July 23rd, two Sundays before Harry’s birthday. He’s been traveling in Siberia, looking for some magical artifact or another, as an excited Lily explains.

“You look like you’re going to be sick,” says Henry absentmindedly, watching Harry pace. “Uncle Sev is a bit scary, sure, but he’s great, I promise. You’ll get along well.”

They’re waiting in the little room between the entryway and the kitchen where the Floo lets out. Henry is engrossed in _Flying with the Cannons_ , which he has borrowed from Harry, while Lily sits hunched over calculations for her work in Charms Architecture, chewing irritably on the end of her quill.

Harry sits down next to Henry, scowling. Dahlia crawls into his lap and bounces. “You’re too big for lap-sitting,” he tells her.

Dahlia turns her startlingly black eyes on him and giggles. “That’s never stopped Geoff.”

“You Potters are a very cuddly family, I’ve found,” Harry says, exasperated.

“‘You Potters’,” Dahlia kicks him in the shin with her bare heel. “You’re funny, Harry.”

The doorbell rings. Dahlia leaps off Harry’s lap and sprints for the door, her brother on her heels.

Lily puts down her quill and sighs. “He must have Apparated in. Of course. I forgot we even had a doorbell installed… Probably Arthur’s doing…”

Riddle has answered the door. Harry swallows drily at the sight of him, composed and cold, Geoffrey at his elbow as usual. That duel had been such a mistake. Harry had let his temper run away from him, yet again, and not even by any fault of Riddle’s.

It’s just that Riddle’s past is so familiar, in ways even the diary hadn’t prepared Harry for. And that had been all well and good, when Harry could dismiss their parallels with the knowledge that Riddle was a twisted, inhuman thing behind his charming smile. Now, though, Harry has seen more of the beast under the mask, and he’s just – a kid. Tom. Smart, sure, and cutting, but also eager to learn, imaginative.

Riddle is even someone who Harry thinks he could be friends with; given their mirrored pasts, perhaps even close friends. The glimpses of that terrify him. Their duel had been a response to that, to the agonizing precipice of Tom-Riddle-as-a-human-being, and it had ended in Riddle splintering, bewildered terror darkening the brown of his eyes, a tremor in his spidery fingers as he took back his wand.

They have not talked for weeks. Lily’s asked him about it, gently pressed him to move back into the non-Sirius-and-Remus room with Riddle, but it’s so much more comfortable to just _not_. To spend his days telling Dahlia stories that don’t irritate the unspeak-seal, or trying to teach Hermione to fly. He and Henry can talk for hours on end about nothing at all. Harry wonders if that’s how Fred and George are, too.

Harry is still something of an outcast; he feels it at the dinner table, when the silence between himself and Riddle feels like a solid force, and when Henry goes over to Malfoy’s without thinking to invite Harry along. He and Henry, for all their similarities, have completely different senses of humor. Geoffrey is cold to Harry, angry at him on Riddle’s behalf. But – it’s fine. Whenever Ron comes over, he and Harry get on as well as they had back home. Ron, it turns out, _does_ like hot sauce, and they had spent an afternoon trying to find the limit of his spice tolerance.

So everything is a thousand times better than summering at the Dursley’s, and Riddle, opening the door for stupid Severus Snape, can’t change that.

Lily and Snape hug, which is gross. This Snape is not quite the same sad man Harry had known. That’s clear just from his robes: rolled up to his elbows, a short-sleeved shirt underneath. His forearm is blank of the deep red Dark Mark as he embraces Harry’s mother.

Dahlia latches onto Snape’s waist and hugs him in her violent, endearing way, and Snape lets go of Lily to lift a squealing Dahlia into the air. “No, Uncle Sev! Down!”

“Did’ja find anything cool?” says Henry, taking his own hug.

Snape _ruffles Geoff’s hair_. Harry thinks he may faint.

“Just stories this time,” Snape says.

“That’s what you said last time!” Geoff whines, ducking out of the noogie.

“Well,” Snape says, coming properly inside and closing the door. “That’s not quite right. Last time I brought home a limp, too.”

And indeed, as Geoff leads Snape up to the living room, Harry sees the stutter in his walk, the way he favors his right leg.

Lily goes to get tea while the Potter kids swarm around their uncle, chatting eagerly. Harry hangs back a bit, then sees Riddle doing the exact same and just ends up feeling doubly uncomfortable.

The tea tray glides up the stairs a moment later, followed by Lily and Rooke.

“Master Partridge!” says Rooke. Harry kneels so their eyes are level. “The jalapeños in the garden are growing well, sir. Rooke thinks they will be harvested by the fall, and we shall see how Master James Potter likes it when he is the one to be pranked.”

Harry stifles his laughter in a hand. “I hope they’ll be ready before September,” he says, delighted. “You’re a mad genius, Rooke.”

She bows, grinning in a way that reminds him of Lily, then sets to pouring everyone their tea.

“Oh!” says Lily, seeing Harry and Riddle standing near the stairs. “Severus, you haven’t met Tom and Harry yet. Come sit down, boys.”

Harry sits on one of the sofas. Riddle very gingerly settles himself down on the couch between Dahlia and Geoffrey.

Snape and Lily are sat on the other couch by the window, and it’s – strange. Snape doesn’t look anything like himself, the same way Henry and an unglamoured Harry don’t actually resemble each other as strongly as ‘temporal clones’ ought to.

In the absence of the war and the terrible, blood-red tattoo on his arm, Snape’s hair is greasy, sure, but mostly just roguish, worn tied back in a ponytail. His face is still intense, hawkish, but in the way of a protector rather than a threat. He wears a heavy necklace around his throat that probably has some magical function, but the effect is just – cool. This Snape seems so young, in a way more pronounced even than in Sirius and Remus.

Now he bounds to his feet, energetic despite the limp, and comes to shake Tom’s and Harry’s hands. It’s a warm handshake. Harry could have sworn, if any unfortunate soul might have dared to touch Snape, that his hands would be slimy. Like a frog, or something.

“I understand you two are going to be in your fifth year,” Snape is saying. Harry tries to subtly lean away from him. “Excellent, excellent. I’ll be your Dark Studies professor.”

Riddle makes a very quiet noise of utter joy that perfectly encapsulates the _opposite_ of Harry’s feelings in that moment. “We didn’t have a Dark Studies class during my time as a student, Professor Snape. I can’t wait to learn from you. Might I ask when the Board changed their tune about Darker curriculum?”

Snape smiles. Harry wants to retch at how natural it looks on his unlined face. “Dumbledore passed some measure on it in the mid-sixties. I think old Orla Wildsmith got to him about combatting stigma and fostering a generation of non-homeschooled Dark wizards.”

Riddle nods like he completely understands everything that Snape is talking about. Harry holds his tongue on his shocked disbelief and notes to ask Henry later. But really – Dark Arts being taught at Hogwarts? Approved by _Dumbledore_? Surely that can’t be right. Unnerved, Harry cracks his knuckles and sulks.

Tom gets out the old-fashioned handkerchief he’s been lugging around since his long illness, blowing his nose quietly, and Harry feels a bit better about life.

Snape falls back onto the couch with Lily, taking off his outer robe and launching into a story about a yeti, a very lost cartographer, and a misplaced bottle of Fearlessness. His sarcasm is softened somewhat, but recognizable; Harry had never thought of Snape as funny, but now it’s becoming clear that some of his meanness just came from a warped, deadpan sense of humor that had landed badly on its audience of children.

Harry doesn’t understand Snape, doesn’t know what was at the root of this change, but even he finds himself laughing along as his old professor talks. Henry, Geoff, and Dahlia hang onto Snape’s every word with endearing eagerness, and Riddle keeps asking careful questions and glancing around as if for a surface to take notes on.

James finally wanders upstairs just as they’re finishing up with the biscuits Rooke had provided. He greets Snape like an old friend and flops down between him and Lily on the couch. As the three adults fall into talking about people Harry doesn’t know and telling stories from their school days, Harry catches Henry’s eye and tilts his head. Geoff and Dahlia stay put, obviously interested in whatever Snape and James are laughing about.

Goodness. Snape, laughing. Harry is going to need a long shower and a _lot_ of Butterbeer.

Riddle, evidently bored, follows them out, and they all end up in the Floo receiving room, where Rooke brings them another tray of biscuits.

Harry props his socked feet up on the table. “So what’d’they teach in Dark Arts class?”

“Dark _Studies_ , actually,” Henry corrects absentmindedly. “I don’t quite know yet. They only start us in our fifth year. Apparently Dark stuff can be real tricky and not everyone has the natural inclination for it, so you get a year of it when you’re old enough. Then you can choose to take the advanced courses sixth and seventh year.”

“They add a mandatory new course to people’s schedules during their O.W.L. year? But that’s barbaric,” says Riddle, looking completely unconcerned.

“O.W. – oh, those old exams? Nah, they discontinued those a while ago. Nowadays the N.E.W.T.s are the only Ministry-standardized test we have to do. Exam periods at the ends of fifth and sixth year are pretty intense, though, and the grade you get on them is supposed to inform what classes you should take the next year.”

“Shame,” says Riddle, and Harry can’t for the life of him figure out whether or not he’s serious. Henry looks similarly confused.

“So, er, Dark Studies? Do they, like, see if we’re good at murdering people? ‘Cause I want to opt out if that’s the case.”

Riddle stares at him. He looks like _he_ would be good at murdering people. Harry stares back. Riddle looks away, and the weeks-old guilt rises fresh in him once more.

“It’s not about murdering people,” Henry says, offended. “Merlin, if this is how people talked about the Dark Arts back in the day, no wonder they had to restructure the whole curriculum. Tom, please tell me this sort of thing isn’t universal among your generation.”

“I, and many of my peers, have and had nothing but respect for the… subtler side of magic,” says Riddle with disdain. He’s staring, now, into the cold grate of the fire.

Harry gnaws on a biscuit and scowls. “Dark magic is magic that causes others harm, right? I just… that shouldn’t be taught in a school, Henry. Even if it is _artsy_ and _subtle_.”

Both Henry and Riddle stare at him now. Harry swallows his biscuit and crosses his arms.

“Harry, that’s – that was war propaganda. Like, to turn people against Grindelwald and his supporters. The Partridges are an old enough family that you should have been taught that, right, Tom?”

Harry finds himself leaning into his hand, feeling the shape of his lightning-bolt scar.

“Harry didn’t exactly have an ideal home life,” says Riddle distantly. “And the Darkness was largely relegated to criminality in our time. I only know the truth because of my friends in Slytherin.”

“Oh, Harry, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,” Henry leans forward, eyes green and earnest. “I’m glad you’re in this time now. We’ll take care of you, I promise. And I’ll teach you what I know about the Dark.”

“Er,” says Harry. “I – sure. I suppose.”

“Tom will help too, won’t you, Tom? I know you, er. Y’know.”

Tom blinks. “I hadn’t realized it was that obvious.”

“Luna has a sense for it. She told me.”

“I’m afraid –”

“Tom, don’t let your ridiculous feud get in the way of this.”

“If Harry Partridge can’t stand just to be in the same room as me, I fail to see how some sort of tutoring arrangement is meant to function.”

Harry looks up, bewildered, but sees what Riddle means, how he’s sat himself as far away from him as physically possible, how every inch of his posture has radiated discomfort throughout this little confrontation.

And then Riddle’s leaving, posture perfect and too-long hair fluttering.

“Don’t you think perhaps you’ve been a bit cruel to him?” asks Henry piercingly.

“I –” says Harry. _Yes_.

***

The morning of July 31st, Tom wakes to Geoffrey on his chest, shocked eyes on Tom’s wand, which has whipped up to point at his neck.

“ _Oh, it’s just you_ ,” hisses Tom, still half-asleep.

“Um,” says Geoff, “what? Also, do you always sleep with your wand under your pillow?”

Tom sighs ponderously and sinks back into his bed. “I can’t sleep without it. How’d you sneak in here, anyway?”

“I’m stealthy.”

“You’re really not. What time is it? Why are you here?”

“It’s like nine,” Geoff says with a yawn. “But that’s not important. It’s Henry’s birthday!”

“What does that have to do with waking up before nine?”

“We gotta surprise him, Tom!”

“Was I meant to get him a gift? I didn’t. Not going to, either.”

“I didn’t get him a gift, either. But that’s why we have to do something. I don’t want to go down in history as the kind of brother who forgets people’s birthdays!”

Tom lets out another gusty sigh. “So this is Lily’s doing, huh?” he says, seeing her stern eyes looming in Geoff’s thoughts.

“Um. Yeah.”

“Shoo. I’ll get dressed.”

They arrive in the living room to see a pajama-clad Harry sitting in an armchair, Lincoln the kneazle on his lap, Maggie the kneazle perched beside him.

“ _You’re_ the reason Maggie isn’t sleeping in Mum and Dad’s bed anymore?” says Geoff, wrinkling his nose.

“They approve of my sleep schedule,” Harry says, transparently trying to hide behind Maggie.

Tom grits his teeth. Harry is such a _problem_. It would be obnoxious enough that he just doesn’t care for Tom, but he has enough raw magical power that he can really get away with disliking anyone he wants. Even if Tom decides he wants to incur his wrath, underage magic laws stop them from sorting out their differences until September.

And that would all be grating enough, but when Tom skims Harry’s mind lately, he finds the old, gnawing hatred tempered by a stomach-turning pity. As soon as they get back to Hogwarts, Tom resolves to skin this boy for the impudence of it all – if only he could figure out what happened to their wands during the duel…

“Huh,” Geoff is saying, a bit prickly still – he’s been doing an admirable job of treating Harry with disdain in emulation of Tom, but disliking people doesn’t come naturally to him. Unfortunately, he appears to have reached his breaking point of rudeness, because then he’s going “d’you want to help me and Tom make a birthday surprise for Henry?”

And then Harry’s saying, “yeah, sure,” and gently relocating Lincoln.

“So,” says Tom, as they come downstairs and settle at the kitchen table. Geoff plops down at his right hand and Harry sits across from him. A feeble war council, but Tom can make it work. “How are we going to surprise the birthday boy?”

He and Harry both look expectantly at Geoff, who squirms. “You’re the genius, Tom, I thought you’d figure it out…”

“I’ve known Henry for a month, Geoffrey. You’ve known him your whole life. I think you are definitely the resident Henry authority.”

“Well poop, you’re right,” says Geoff.

“No poop at the table, young Master!” says Rooke, popping into existence on the tabletop. Tom rubs his kneecaps in a memory of pain and leans back.

“Sorry, Rooke. Say, could I have a waffle?”

Rooke snaps her fingers and the kitchen whirs into a frenzy. “Save room for Master Henry’s birthday brunch!”

“So, Geoffrey has proved useless as a source.” Tom frowns. “Harry, what kind of a birthday surprise would you want?”

Harry blinks, frowns, and cracks his knuckles. “I take it half-giants carrying cakes are out of the question.”

Tom gives Harry his best _what on earth is wrong with you_ look, which he’s practiced a lot this summer between Harry and Henry. Geoff crosses his arms and tries to make the same face. Harry snickers. This is not the desired effect. “Yes, half-giants are out,” says Tom.

Harry shrugs. “We could bake him something, though.”

“Rooke’s already doing that! And her cakes are the best, seriously, we can’t compete with perfection.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Geoff. It’s just that something handmade by your friends can mean a lot, sometimes. And I have the absolute best recipe for pumpkin bread.”

So, once Geoff has had his waffle and Rooke has vacated the kitchen, they start preparing to make Harry’s pumpkin bread. By the time they’ve gathered their ingredients, Geoff has completely forgotten he’s angry with Harry.

“So Filch didn’t know I was there, _on the ceiling_ , but Mrs. Norris definitely did. So she was doing her cat thing, you know, staring – no offense, Maggie – and I was staring back, kind of panicking, and then Uncle Severus showed up, too!”

Harry hands a bowl to Tom and says, “stir this until it’s all combined.” Maggie winds around his legs. “You’d best not get any fur in our bread,” Harry says warningly, but Maggie stretches and exposes her belly, and Harry ends up giving her pets anyway.

By the time they’ve stowed the bread in the oven, it’s nearly ten o’clock. Geoffrey parks himself in front of the oven, like he intends to watch it bake until it’s done. “You know, we used to call Henry ‘Harry’, too.”

“Funny,” says Harry, and Tom tastes curiosity in his mind.

“My parents really liked the name, but he started going by his full name when he went to Hogwarts.”

“Draco’s influence, maybe,” comments Tom.

“Maybe,” says Geoff. “But really – Harry, I feel like you’ve been kind of part of this family for a long time. I’m sorry I’ve been so cold to you.”

“Oh,” says Harry. “I – there’s no need to apologize, Geoff, really, I – thank you? I suppose?”

“It’s just,” Geoff says, “I feel the same way about Tom. I think maybe there should be more apologies flying around.”

“You and Henry have been _plotting_ , haven’t you?”

Geoff sniffs. “And what of it?”

“Draco’s influence,” Tom says again, grinning.

That shocks a snicker out of Harry.

“Mum and Dad were talking about adopting you two,” says Geoff, cross. “They won’t do it if you’re terrible to each other.”

That gives them both pause. Tom reluctantly shelves his revenge plots and presents his hand to Harry. “I will do my best,” he says sincerely, “to treat you with the same respect I offer Dahlia, Geoff, and Henry.”

Harry considers his hand with mingled disgust and fascination. It’s most unkind; Tom has been reliably told that he has pretty hands, and Walburga Black is not a woman to give compliments lightly. Perhaps she would not say the same thing if she saw him now, right hand disfigured.

“I will treat you with the same respect you offer me,” Harry says, not taking Tom’s hand. The revenge plots rattle like stolen children’s toys on the shelves of his mind.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” sighs Geoff.

“I did not,” Tom says coldly, “have pinned you as an unkind person, Harry Po – Partridge. The past month has encouraged me to revise that assessment.”

He and Geoff go back up to the living room, leaving Harry to his bread. Lincoln gets up and heads downstairs, probably to help Maggie get fur in the baking.

“I thought you two were friends at Hogwarts,” says Geoff. “And I know you’ve been fighting, but I don’t – I thought it was – I don’t understand.”

“We weren’t friends, more… distant acquaintances who happened to be in the wrong place at the same time,” Tom says, tracing a cracking scar up and down his thumb. “I think I must have done something to make him hate me, but I didn’t realize how he felt until we had to live in the same house together.”

“Huh,” says Geoff, clearly invested in the fib. “So –”

Someone trundles down the stairs, yawning. Geoff hurtles to his feet and catches Henry around the waist, beaming. “Happy birthday, Henry!”

Henry reaches up to ruffle Geoff’s russet hair, a gesture that had probably worked better before Geoff caught up to him in height.

“Happy birthday,” says Tom warmly.

“Thanks, Tom,” Henry yawns through an enormous smile. “Reckon Rooke’s got my birthday brunch made?”

“Maybe,” says Geoff. “But Dad’s not up yet.”

The brothers get identical evil looks in their eyes. Tom is helpless to do anything but watch as they sprint around the corner. He hears James yell groggily, then burst into uproarious laughter. Tom can only roll his eyes. This is James’s fault for reproducing his mischievous genes into the next generation.

They head downstairs to find that the birthday brunch is, indeed, ready. Harry passes a box to Geoff – the pumpkin bread. Lily has just given Henry a hug and they’re all sitting down to eat when the Floo ignites.

Remus Lupin and Sirius Black come out, a round man with sandy hair fast on their heels.

“Peter!” says James. “It’s been far too long! I know the Minister keeps you busy, but I haven’t seen you outside of work in ages – oh, yes, go on, pull up a chair –”

There follows a great shuffling of chair conjuration and table expansion, and just as everyone’s settled in again, the Floo opens again.

Severus Snape, Tom’s new favorite professor, sweeps in. “Henry! Happy fifteenth birthday. Am I late for brunch?”

Brunch is delicious – Tom mostly eats fruit, but Rooke has also whipped up some egg dish involving bread and broccoli.

Party guests start piling in around noon, bearing gifts and hugs, and Tom is quickly overwhelmed. He has trouble sometimes, at celebrations of any kind. So many minds, all bright with excitement… It’s so easy for him to get lost in some boy’s weekend plans to go out to London, or a husband’s concerns about his wife’s long hours, or in just admiring the structure of one boy’s thoughts, all crystalline and elegant.

“This is Dean Thomas,” Henry says, seeming to catch him staring.

Tom considers the boy with the stained-glass mind. Tall, black, terrible posture. He shakes his hand and smiles. “Tom Riddle. It's a pleasure.”

And then Tom’s swept up in a flood of people, Henry and his friends, mostly Ravenclaws except for Tom, Ron, and Neville Longbottom, who has broad shoulders and an easy smile. Tom tries to remember names – _Fey, Jonathan, Padma_ – but they’re all just satellites around Harry, Hermione, and Draco’s easy dynamic.

After a couple of minutes of this, Tom and the Gryffindors split off.

“You seen Harry, Tom?” asks Ron as they stroll through the rose garden.

“I lost him after all the guests arrived,” Tom says, then glances around. “Hey, Geoffrey!”

Geoff runs over, towing Ginny and Luna in his wake.

“Do you know where Harry is?”

He shrugs. “Probably inside. You should go talk to him, see if he’s up for a game of birthday Quidditch!”

“Thanks, Geoff,” says Ron, turning to go find his friend.

“Um,” says Geoff. “I think Tom should go talk to him, actually. Like, alone.”

Ron frowns. Tom scowls. Neville looks confused.

“Tom and Harry are _feuding_ ,” says Geoff to Neville, who nods knowingly. “Which is completely inappropriate behavior, Tom! Especially on Henry’s birthday.”

Tom freezes. _Henry’s_ birthday. Oh dear.

“Very well,” he says. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Tom finds Harry in Sirius’s and Remus’s old room, playing with the golden watch he’d been wearing the night they’d ripped time apart.

“Riddle,” Harry says guardedly. “What do you want? More ‘brotherly affection'?”

Tom determines to ignore that. “It’s your birthday, too, isn’t it?”

The clasp on the watch clicks open, then shut, open, then shut. The loneliness in Harry’s mind seems buried deeper even than his hatred for Tom, and it’s all he can sense for a moment. _How do you_ function _, you ridiculous thing, with all that_ feeling _inside you?_

“Yes. It’s my birthday. Don’t worry, I’m used to not having it celebrated.” _Click_.

“In that case, um. Happy birthday, Harry. I wish I’d thought to bake you some pumpkin bread.”

Harry looks up from the watch, and his eyes are smiling. Tom tastes gratitude in his thoughts and offers him a real smile in exchange.

“I – The oaks have called you, too, haven’t they? Would you like to meet them?”

“How –”

“They told me they did. Are you coming? Something tells me you’re not interested in watching Henry open his presents.”

This time when Tom extends his hand, Harry takes it.

***

The party is in full swing in the back yard. Lily and James have dragged out their old radio, which is cheerfully blasting a Weird Sisters song Harry recognizes from the Yule Ball.

Henry sees them and grins, waving them over. “Tom, you met everyone, right? Everyone, this is Harry. Harry, this is Fey Crouch, Jonathan Tonks, Padma Patil, and Dean Thomas. Er, Elaine Prewett is somewhere around here, too… oh, she’s over by Luna, the girl in green. Yeah. Have you talked with Ron? He was looking for you…”

Harry looks around. A knot of parents chat in the shadow of the house, one of Rooke’s platters floating through and keeping the alcohol circulating. Snape sits on the ground next to serious Dahlia, conjuring butterflies. Luna, Elaine, and Ginny are attempting a funny little dance along to the radio. And _there’s_ Ron, Neville at his side – had Neville been so _tall_ when Harry had last seen him? – trailing another floating platter with tiny sandwiches on it.

“Hey, Ron,” says Harry, trotting up.

“Hey, mate! Good to see you. I don’t think you and Neville have met? This is Neville Longbottom. His mum’s our Defense teacher – Neville, I don’t suppose she’s here?”

“She’s busy – secret mission for Dumbledore,” Neville says humorously, shaking Harry’s hand with an expectant smile. Harry smiles back.

Riddle elbows him sharply in the side and his smile freezes. _Introductions. Right_. “I’m, er, Harry Partridge,” he says, wincing.

Neville inspects him, perhaps thinking Harry had been hiding inside due to a crippling fear of social situations. “It’s nice to meet you, Harry,” he says kindly.

Riddle drags him away, whispering, “Well done there, Partridge.”

“Where I come from, people just know who I am. They line up to shake my hand. I make headlines everywhere I go,” he says. The un-speak seal on his neck itches.

“You are a very strange person, you know that?” Riddle muses.

“Neither of us belong in this time and place.”

“Perhaps not. But I _will_ , one of these days.”

Riddle takes Harry by the sleeve and tugs him into the shadow of the forest.

The birch wood is just as Harry remembers, cool and dense, like another world completely from the party out in the yard.

Riddle seems in his element here, the rich brown of his eyes deepened by blown-out pupils. His posture changes subtly, and the length of his limbs and hair seems intentional and dangerous, like more than the side-effects of puberty and a distrust of haircuts.

“Your full name is Henry, then?” says Riddle as they clear a fallen pine.

“No,” says Harry. “I mean, I don’t know. If it is, no one bothered to tell me so.”

“I’m just called Tom. Not short for Thomas or anything. I’ve never liked that.”

“I like Harry just fine,” he says, not sure why they’re having this conversation at all. “I like Tom just fine, too, for the record.”

“Is that so,” says Riddle, considering him with those dark eyes. Harry feels irritation rise in his throat.

“Why are you doing this? Bringing me back to the – the scene of the crime, _talking_ to me like we’re friends or something?”

“The scene of the crime? Oh, you mean the duel.” Riddle pauses. “The oaks are curious about you, Geoff really wants us to get along, you’re powerful enough to be a valuable ally… really, it would be stupid not to try and make… amends, somehow.”

Harry scoffs. “We’re never going to be allies, Riddle, and no amount of small talk or favors is going to change that.”

Riddle’s eyes are so, so dark. He’s stopped in the path, head tilted to the side, looking every inch a beast of the forest. He opens his mouth, and Harry is half-surprised to see human teeth between his lips. “No one’s ever celebrated my birthday, either,” is all he says. A dancing patch of dappled sunlight catches in his eye, outlining the void of his pupil in gold. “I seem to be the only one in this timeline who’s figured out that today’s yours. I thought this might make you a bit less sulky about the whole thing.”

Well, that’s – that’s almost thoughtful. Harry isn’t sure what to make of it. “Riddle, I – you understand that I’m operating under the assumption that you’re a psychopath. I’m having trouble –”

“I’m not a _psychopath_ ,” Riddle sputters, and suddenly he’s human again. “You – what the hell, Potter! Partridge. Whatever. Why am I being nice to you, again?”

“Because you think I’m useful, somehow?” Harry says, edging away. “Or because you’re scared of me. Actually, that makes a lot of sense… Um. Riddle. Thanks for the little tour. I’m gonna just go watch Henry open presents, if that’s all right…”

“Potter,” Riddle says, and Harry looks up at him, and now he can see Voldemort in the shape of his face, the angle of his eyes, his gangly proportions. “Good Lord, point your wand somewhere else, _please_.”

Harry points his wand at the ground, glaring.

“I –” Riddle’s chest heaves. “Can we just sit, for a moment, and – I have to ask you something, but –”

A roar echoes out from the center of the woods, and they both go still. Harry watches the color drain from Riddle’s face.

Harry looks at this boy, with his too-short trousers and shaggy black hair and long, albino-spider hands. Looks at his face, torn with anxiety, and feels the same pull in his chest from after they watched _Star Wars_. “Tom, what was that?”

“Nothing native to this forest,” he says. “Nothing that should be anywhere near the white oak grove.”

The tension in Riddle’s body is building. Harry can tell he’s going to bolt at any moment, rush off to that place with the starry wildflowers and the little river that reflects the sky even from where it flows deep below the canopy. “What are they, Tom? The oaks?”

“You’ll see,” Riddle says tightly, and then the tension shatters, and he’s sprinting away from Harry, towards that growling, horrible roar.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Harry snarls, but then he’s tearing after Riddle, into the depths of the birch wood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this? A hint of actual plot?! Inconceivable!
> 
> Reading over this chapter, I actually really like parts of it. I would love to hear your thoughts!
> 
> (proceeds to abuse the power of emojis)  
> 🦞


	5. The Manticore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom drive away the beast in the woods, but at a cost.

Tom has longer legs, but none of Harry’s athleticism. He soon trails behind, wheezing, as Harry blazes forward.

“No,” Tom says as Harry slows. “Go on, really, I’ll catch up in a moment.”

So Harry accelerates, the forest closing around him. Tom forces himself onwards, and gradually the running becomes easier. He hears birdsong in the canopy, a warbling rendition of the oaks’ melody, and as his steps fall into beat with the murmuring of the birches overhead, his breathing becomes less labored.

_Step, step, in, step, step, out_ , and the flute choir of the birds, and the crackle of the creatures he feels watching him from the undergrowth, carry Tom to the wildflower clearing where he and Harry had dueled. The brook whispers incoherently, anxious.

Tom kneels in the waist-high circle of starry wildflowers, letting one wind itself around his finger. It feeds him an impression of Harry, calloused and gentle, doing as Tom is now, then departing in haste towards the stream.

“ _Thank you_ ,” Tom says to the flowers, slipping into Parseltongue in his distraction.

The song of the white oak grove is muted and panicky, nothing like the bloodlusty beat from the duel. Tom crosses the brook himself, not trusting the magic of this place to assist him this time. He discards his robe, its hem sopping wet, at the bank.

The thing in the grove roars again, so close now; Tom finds the energy for a final sprint, imagining Harry bleeding out, the trees torn in two, the blue of the sky descending to engulf the grove in its entirety.

Tom freezes at the crest of the hill, chest constricted – he’s hit with a wall of music, low and mournful, vibrating in the marrow of his bones.

It's almost as terrible as he'd expected - two of the ten white oaks have fallen, their leaves strewn everywhere. Tom can feel their bleeding stumps from here, their magic leaking out and chafing away at his mind, pulling him towards a mad oblivion.

In the center of it all, a creature easily seven meters tall looms, its wingspan long enough to span the clearing, scorpion’s tail lashing tauntingly above its head, mane blazing with all the glory of the sun.

Harry, atop one of the five standing rocks in the center of the oaks’ clearing, looks so tiny. Tom watches, breath in his throat, face wet, as curse after curse flies at the beast. The creature – _manticore_ , he realizes, remembering long nights spent poring over his _Care of Magical Creatures_ textbook – shivers under the force of a nasty impediment jinx Harry lands square on its wide pink nose.

Tom’s heartbeat feels erratic and all-encompassing; he can hardly bring himself to move against the horror of the felled trees and his thoughts, ricocheting out of control: ‘ _The venom, while prized by potioneers for its acidic properties when combined with snapdragon root, is a Ministry-restricted substance because of how dangerous obtaining it can be. When injected with the stinger, victims experience immediate paralysis followed by death within the hour. While considered less potent than basilisk venom, the…_ ’

The manticore’s muscles bunch as it shakes off Harry’s curse, and his following _Stupefy_ only seems to irritate it. _It’s going to pounce_ , Tom thinks distantly, and the dread song of the grove reaches its climax.

Harry leaps off the standing stone, casting a shield to ward away rubble as the manticore slams into where he’d been standing. “Tom?” he says, looking up, and a shock of cold clarity finally hits Tom’s stomach.

He wipes the drying tears from his face and grips his wand. “You all right?”

Harry, who is much more screwed up than Tom had imagined, spits and grins. “Distract it, will you? I just need a second.”

Shock threatens to swamp Tom again, but he swallows it back. The manticore shakes off its impact with the stone, turning to face Harry once again. The clearing isn’t nearly big enough for it to fly, but Tom can see its shoulders tighten in preparation for another lunge.

Tom casts a disemboweling curse, packing it with enough magic to kill a human five times over. It still won’t be enough to take out a beast as magical – and enormous – as a manticore, but it should hurt like hell.

The thing bellows and swerves toward Tom. He hurls more spells – tooth remover, a transfiguration from class that turned kittens into egg cups, the particularly nasty vocal cord-severing curse. None seem to affect it much. “ _Serpents, to me_!” he hisses desperately, stumbling backwards.

The manticore plunges towards him, enormous beyond belief, teeth like swords and paws large enough to crush boulders. Tom kneels and touches the ground, feeling the oaks pour their magic through him.

His body goes electric with the wild magic, mouth bursting with saliva, every hair on end, ears screaming with the song of the grove. He straightens up, pulling the forest with him, and briars lash forward to tangle at the beast’s feet. Tom summons moss to crawl up its immobilized body, racing up to its eyes, but it shakes itself off far too quickly.

The snakes arrive then, in the dozens, but they’re all small and non-venomous. “ _Distract it_ ,” Tom hisses, “ _but be careful_.” He scoops up a handful of rocks, transfiguring them into vipers to lead the little wood snakes.

Hidden behind one of the standing oaks, Harry shouts in victory. Tom glances over just in time to see him snatch a Nimbus out of the air and soar straight at the manticore, sending curses at its face. Tom grits his teeth, pulling again for the briar patch, and it rises to snarl the manticore in place.

“Bring it down low,” Harry orders, swooping down to harangue the manticore. When it snaps at him with its huge teeth, he aims a spell at its mouth. The spell misses, hitting one of Tom’s vipers. The conjuration peels apart, scale by scale, leaving a fleshy smear that soon dissolves to dust. “ _Sorry_ ,” Harry hisses with a little yelp of surprise.

Tom tugs downwards, narrowing his eyes as he drags more and more spiny brambles up from the earth to confine the manticore. Ivy follows, weaving itself into the briars, and the sheer mass of the matted plant life bows the beast’s enormous head to the ground.

“ _Go for its eyes_ ,” calls Harry, and the snakes rush forward, like ants to a dead bird. The manticore bellows, trying to shake its head, but the confines of the plants are too much for it. Harry sets off another volley of spells, managing to score a deep gash in the manticore’s flank.

Tom follows his example, abandoning his greenery to set about transfiguring more creatures to help them: grizzly bears and tigers and a single woolly mammoth. His wand sings like it had during the duel, wild and triumphant, and his conjured creatures are the strongest he’s ever made.

He thinks, for a bright, fleeting moment, that they’ve won.

But then there’s a flare of power, and he’s knocked back, watching the plants and animals under his control splinter back into magic as the manticore hauls itself back to its feet.

There’s a wizard on its back, he realizes, half-hidden in its mane, their wand held high. The beast pants, blood frothing from its mouth, eyes swelling, ravaged by hundreds of snake bites.

Tom casts a laser-fast disembowelment curse, but the figure ducks. Before he can prepare another spell, the manticore spreads its wings and lifts off the ground, flinging itself through the gap in the canopy left by the two dead trees.

It pauses just above the tree line, wobbling in the air – not blind, Tom thinks, but close. Harry had delivered a nasty burn to one of its wings. The figure on its back lifts their wand again, and the enormous felled tree trunks rise ponderously upwards.

Tom yells, pointing his own wand and pulling back on the dead oaks, but the strain is too much. As he topples to the dirt, the figure lashes the trees to the manticore and departs. Oak leaves flutter around Tom, coating the destroyed clearing.

The eight remaining oaks whisper to themselves, miserable, and Tom’s eyes slip closed as he again feels the weight of the dead stumps. The wind shifts, and so does the whispering; Tom feels the trees’ distant joy at the chance to drink the blood of a creature so magical as a manticore. And beneath that – human blood, the first they’d tasted in a century.

Tom forces himself to his feet, unsteady. _Harry_. He must have been blown out of the air in the same spell that killed Tom’s wildlife. And yes: there he is, slumped lifelessly at the foot of the oldest oak tree. Tom can see, even from half a clearing away, the blood on his face.

“Harry,” he says, rushing to him, half-tripping over a chunk of rock. “God, are you okay?”

Harry’s poor summoned broomstick lays in the dirt beside him, snapped in two. The roots of the tree have started coiling around his feet. “Oh, not _now_ ,” says Tom, sending an unformed shock of magic into the tree.

Harry’s eyes snap open, and for a moment Tom’s back in the Department of Mysteries, startled into silence by _green_ , the brightness of it shocking against the blood smeared across his forehead. “Don’t worry, I’ve had much worse,” Harry mumbles, eyes unfocused.

“You’ve lost your amulet,” Tom says, distracted.

“ _Accio_ ,” say Harry lazily, and hands the necklace to Tom.

He looks at it, then back at Harry. “Has anyone ever told you how weird your eyes are, Harry Potter?”

“Growing up, people always said I was the spitting image of James, but with Lily’s eyes…”

“They lied,” Tom says, because Lily and Henry have sort of soft green eyes, like the underside of a sword fern. Harry’s eyes are violently green, startling even through his likely concussion. “You’re a Parselmouth?”

“So’re you.”

“Is Henry a Parselmouth, too?”

“We’ll have to ask him, don’t you think? Y’know, Tom, that was actually pretty fun… I reckon you can be my new monster-hunting companion, now that all my old friends have lost their scars…”

“Fuck,” says Tom, watching Harry’s eyes slip half-closed. “You’re not making any sense, Harry. No, don’t you dare go to sleep – _Rennervate_!”

Harry’s breath hitches, eyes flying open. Tom puts the amulet back around his neck so he won’t have to look into that green anymore.

“Harry, I don’t suppose you somehow know how to cast a Patronus? I’m afraid I’ll hurt you if I try to get you home on my own. We need to send a message to Lily and James.”

Harry screws up his face, and Tom resolves to bump ‘learn basic healing magic’ up on his list of extracurricular academic priorities. “ _Expecto Patronum_ ,” Harry incants, bloody face dark with concentration.

A magnificent silvery stag sprouts from the tip of his wand, landing delicately on the torn ground of the grove. Tom wastes a breathless moment just staring at this creation of starlight. “Get Lily and James Potter,” he instructs it eventually. “Tell them Harry Partridge needs urgent medical attention.”

The stag leaps away, careening through the forest with the same ease as its summoner.

“Harry,” Tom says, feeling the mind behind Harry’s now-gray eyes begin to sputter. “Look at me. Concentrate on my voice. You cannot pass out, you hear me? That unbelievable bloody Patronus that you somehow know how to summon is going to get you help, but you need to stay awake so it can deliver its message, understand?”

When talking isn’t enough to keep Harry from slipping away, Tom shifts to singing – hymns from chorus with the nuns, bawdy Wizarding songs that Simon had taught him – anything, really, other than the mournful song echoing around them in the creaking of the oaks and the babbling of the stream down below.

***

“I was showing Harry a little Bowtruckle nest I found out in the woods,” Tom tells James. “And a forest troll must have heard us and felt a bit peckish… We were able to fight it off – Harry summoned that broom so he could distract it – but it managed to clobber him.”

“That was some very impressive magic, young man,” says James. “You and Harry got very lucky.”

_You have no idea_. Tom sits next to James on the low cobblestone wall ringing the rose garden, watching Henry bid his guests anxious goodbyes in between bites of their pumpkin bread. “So he’s going to be okay, then?”

“The Healers were able to reduce the swelling in his brain very quickly. He had a pretty bad abdominal wound,” James says, and Tom feels his suspicion. A troll would not have lacerated its victims. “Most of his wooziness was from blood loss, not the concussion. But it was a clean wound, and the Healers were able to patch him up pretty quickly. They said to expect a full recovery by noon tomorrow at the latest.”

“Are we going to go to St. Mungo’s to visit?”

“Oh, no, thanks to that Patronus we got to him before he could escalate to the point that they’d need to bring him in. He’s just sleeping in your bedroom while the potions do their work.”

“Thank goodness,” Tom says numbly, playing with his fingers. The Mediwizards had checked him for injuries, healed the bruises on his forearms from his fall, and told him to go play with the other children while they saw to Harry. He’d hated being shunted aside like that.

“Hey,” James puts a hand on Tom’s shoulder, smiling warmly. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Want to go grab something?”

Tom does. He and James nick spaghetti noodles from Rooke’s cupboard, cook them, and serve them with just butter and salt, sitting on the grass. Tom always used to pretend, around all the other Slytherins, that he’s got quite the refined pallet – but these noodles taste better than anything he’s tried in years.

“Is the Ministry going to come after us for underage magic use?” he asks after cleaning his bowl.

“Nah,” says James. “Never for self-defense. Anyway, they have no real proof you even used magic… ancient forests like the one out back are so full of magic that they’re a bit of a dead zone for the Trace. Too much interference, you know?”

“What about the house? Isn’t there just as much magic going on in there?”

James rubs at his beard, chuckling ruefully. “Yeah. The Ministry doesn’t really bother monitoring students’ magic use outside of Muggle areas. Don’t tell the kids, though, okay? I made Draco promise something similar, his parents let him practice magic all summer long.”

“Okay,” Tom promises easily, heading inside for some more excellent pasta. He and James sit together for hours, leaning against the cobblestone wall, as James tells him about Auroring work and the intricacies of policing a nation of people who all sort of know each other. Tom fishes up stories from Hogwarts, of Gideon Nott’s misadventures with dating and a Care of Magical Creatures class that ended with several crying Gryffindors and an Acromantula leg going up the professor’s nose.

By the time the sun’s set, Tom is feeling much better; he can almost forget the empty, scraping misery of the dead oak trees. He sleeps soundly that night, calmed by Harry’s light snoring in the other bed.

***

Tom wakes to the sound of cracking knuckles, just as he had that first morning over a month ago.

“Oh,” Harry says as Tom sits up. “Hello. Why am I in this room?”

“Lily put you here,” Tom yawns. “Just another step in her devious plan to make us best friends.”

“Huh.”

“Is your brain still bruised? You’re having more trouble than usual stringing words together.”

Harry folds his arms, already looking more awake. “See this? _This_ is why we’ll never be friends, Lily or no. Because you’re an asshole.”

“I thought it was because I’m a sneaky, horrible psychopath,” Tom says sharply, only now remembering that he and Harry really _aren’t_ friends. It’s easy to forget that sort of thing when one is busy fighting a manticore by another’s side.

“Fuck, Tom, it’s too early for this.”

“You, Harry, are the _morning person_. One might think you’d crave intellectual sparring at this hour.”

“What time is it, anyway?”

Tom glances meaningfully at the golden watch on Harry’s nightstand. Harry follows his gaze and blinks in surprise.

“Oh, that old thing hasn’t worked since I went in the Black Lake with it on.” He looks up at Tom’s face and frowns at whatever expression he sees there. “Long story.”

“How enigmatic,” Tom says. “Classic trick, really: hide all your boring bits with _mystery_ and watch all parties scramble over themselves trying to crack you.”

“Like you’re one to talk. Tom Riddle, plant mage, master of the creepy fucking trees that tried to _drink my blood_.”

“They did, didn’t they…? We might need to make a sacrifice or two, take the edge off that bloodlust a bit. Shame we missed the summer solstice, but that’s workable.”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not,” Harry says, laughing. “But seriously, Tom, what are those things? Why was I, like, dreaming about them? Why would that creature kill them?”

“They’re white oak trees,” Tom says hesitantly. “Ancient ones, planted back when the Isles were still part of the mainland. There’re precious few left, but the ones that have survived this long… Well, after centuries of blood worship by the druids and millennium spent feeding on the magic of the land, they’re basically sentient. That manticore’s rider could get enough galleons for ten lifetimes of comfortable living off just _one_ of their corpses. There are hundreds of uses for white oak wood – the ancient kind, at least – and a heavily restricted supply of it.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“They’re kind of a Ministry secret, just because they’re so vulnerable to harvest. I only know all that because the ones in the Dark Forest by Hogwarts told me what they were, and I did some research and filled in the blanks.” Tom frowns. “You can’t spread this around, okay? I would never have told you, but they called to you, same as they did me.”

Harry straps on his non-functional watch and sighs. “I won’t spread it around.”

And Tom finds himself trusting him, so that is that.

They go downstairs to find that it’s nearly eleven and they’re the last out of bed, but Geoff nods serenely and says, “Fighting forest trolls is tiring, we know,” and Harry dimples at Tom and mouths, “Forest troll? Really?” and Rooke makes them both omelets with cheese and tomatoes. Tom feels happier than he has since before this whole mess with time started.

Book lists come while they’re eating. Henry opens his first; Tom and Harry are too distracted watching Death Star and the owl with Tom’s letter having some sort of strange, feathery disagreement that involves a lot of hopping on Death Star’s part.

“ _Dad_ ,” Geoff says, somewhere between a gasp and a scream. Tom looks up to see James snickering into his napkin, Henry spilling orange juice all over the table, and Geoff looking utterly betrayed. “You didn’t tell us Uncle Remus was going to be teaching Transfigurations!”

“I thought it would be a fun surprise,” James says mildly, cleaning up Henry’s orange juice with an idle flick of his wand.

“Fun,” Henry adjusts his glasses. “Dad, you know I love you, but your priorities are an absolute mess.”

Lily chooses that moment to walk in, face carefully neutral, but when she sees her sons’ faces she bursts out laughing. “You were right, dear,” she says, leaning heavily against the doorframe. “Priceless! Oh, I will treasure this family memory for years to come…”

Death Star produces a sort of strangled squawk, and the other owl, apparently cowed, meekly lets Tom have his letter so it can be on its way.

“You two are the worst parents ever,” says Geoff, pouting, and Tom glances at Harry just in time to see him roll his eyes.

Tom opens his letter and makes a gasp-scream worryingly similar to Geoff’s. “Our Care book was written by Rubeus Hagrid! I knew him! Kid was a genius!”

Harry spills his orange juice, too. Dahlia, who’s just walked in behind Lily, starts cackling.

***

Harry moves back into the room he’d stayed in the first night, with Tom. It would be silly not to, at this point, the same way it would be silly to continue calling him Riddle, or scrutinizing his every move. Harry is a big believer in bonds formed by spilled blood, and that manticore had spilled a lot of his blood.

Two days after book lists come out, they all go out to Diagon, bringing the Weasleys, Malfoys, Lovegoods, and Gores with them. After his recent decision to let Tom _fucking_ Riddle off the hook for his future career as a mass-murderer, Harry fancies himself quite the open-minded fellow.

However, nothing could ever have prepared him for the unbridled madness of witnessing _Arthur Weasley and Lucius Malfoy_ exclaim with joy at seeing each other. Harry makes a garbled noise and flails a bit, looking to Ron for help.

“Bit of an odd couple, aren’t they?” he says, freckled face lit with humor. “Coworkers though, you know. They had both only just joined the workforce when old Nik Tressle’s tricity boxes started getting really popular. They were involved in a lot of the early legislation regulating which Muggle devices could be altered.”

“Er,” Harry says. “Sorry, but what’s a ‘tricity box’?”

“Oh! I’m sorry, Harry, I’m always forgetting you’re not from this time. Well, I’m not quite sure how it works, but it’s a little magical device that you can fasten to electric Muggle things to get them to function even in the presence of magic. It opened the way for all sorts of experimentation with Muggle ideas and advancement in Wizarding entertainment.”

“Like the Potters’ projector!” Harry says. “I was wondering how that thing worked.”

They all buy their books for the year, grab their potions things from the apothecaries, then split off into smaller groups. James makes a bit of a fuss over how Tom must have grown an inch over the last month _alone_ , and needs a new wardrobe immediately. Tom’s nose goes rather pink, but his current robes do only go down about to mid-calf. It looks as though he hasn’t gotten to buy new ones in at least two years.

Harry, Henry, Draco, Ron, Geoff, Ginny, Damocles, and Dahlia have all been in a bit of a tizzy over the new broom they’d glimpsed in Quality Quidditch supply’s window, so Arthur, Molly, and Lucius give in and take them to have a good ogle. The remaining group includes Hermione and Narcissa, who seem to have developed a terrifying, nerdy mentor-student bond. Harry has a feeling they’re just going to end up back in some bookstore.

The new broom is suitably awe-inspiring. “I wish Dad were here,” Henry remarks to Harry, laughing. “I’d like to have a go at convincing him to nab one as a replacement for the Nimbus your troll brutalized.”

Harry snickers. “Maybe in another year, the price’ll dip enough that we can pull that off.”

They meet back up in front of Flourish and Blott’s, and all buy ice cream before going their separate ways.

The Potters, Harry, and Tom all sit together in the kitchen to polish off their ice cream. Harry savors the taste of caramel, letting himself pretend for just a moment that he belongs in this strange, idyllic timeline.

***

Sirius, Remus, Pettigrew, and Snape all come over a week after their Diagon trip. The four of them and Lily and James commandeer the kitchen for the sole purpose of imbibing large amounts of alcohol, as far as Harry and Tom can figure.

“Thoughts on the Defense book?” Tom asks, flipping idly through his own already-dog-eared copy of _Advanced Defense: Harnessing the Dark_ – which had been assigned, indeed, by a Professor Alice Longbottom.

Harry huffs. “I still don’t get what Dark magic even _is_. The book didn’t bother explaining anything, so I haven’t been able to understand half of what it’s talking about. Once it started going on about house plants, I gave up.”

“Didn’t Henry say he was going to teach you?”

“I got prickly and he said he was going to need Hermione’s help to ‘get anything through my thick skull.’ And then he forgot completely, as far as I can tell.”

“Don’t take it personally,” says Tom, frowning down at a page of the Defense book. “He and Draco are knees-deep in that experiment they’re doing on that tip of one of the giant squid’s tentacles.”

Harry blinks. “No one told me _that_ was going on. How – actually, I’m probably better off not knowing.”

“Ravenclaws are weird,” Tom says in sage agreement, snapping his textbook shut. “That’s alright, I’m the better person to be teaching you about the Dark anyway.”

Harry swallows. He’s grown to quite like Tom over the past week or so, despite himself, but the whole _thing_ he has for the Dark Arts is a bit uncomfortable, even if Henry had made it clear that ‘Dark magic’ is defined very differently between their two timelines.

“Okay,” says Tom, straightening up. “So: two kinds of magic, right? Light and Dark.”

“Er, right.”

“Spells can be Light, Dark, or Gray. If they’re purely Light, that means they’re elemental. _Lumos_ , _Incendio_ , _Aqua Eructo_ , et cetera. If they’re purely Dark, they’re to do with the body and mind. Living creatures. The French call it _magie de la chair_ , flesh magic. Examples include any transfiguration involving plants and animals, mind-altering potions, most healing spells. And torture spells, sure, but that’s really a gross misrepresentation of the field as a whole.”

“Creepy,” Harry says, just to see Tom’s mouth quirk upward.

“You’re one to talk,” he says. “I swear your eyes glow in the dark behind that ridiculous glamour.”

“They do _not_ ,” says Harry, but the eye thing _is_ weird. He still misses looking in the mirror and seeing his parent’s features, but Tom’s confirmation that he really _doesn’t_ have Lily’s eyes makes him a little glad for the glamour.

“Anyway,” Tom says. “That all is only a big deal because wizards tend to be Light, Dark, or Gray in the same way spells are.”

“Okay,” Harry says. “And what does that _mean_?”

“Basically, the greater proportion of Light magic you naturally have, the stronger your elemental spells will be.”

“And the more Dark you have, the stronger your fleshy spells?” Harry frowns. “Is there any way to tell what proportions of magic you have?”

“Well, most of us do our best with trial and error,” Tom says. “Some wizards are born with a sense for it – Henry says Luna is like that, she can just tell by looking at someone. But that’s really very rare. Luna could probably do very well for herself by making people pay her for a sort of ‘magic reading’ service.”

“Oh,” Harry plays with the cover of his textbook. “I’ve never noticed that kind of thing, not really.”

“Most people are pretty Gray, but lean one way or another,” Tom says. “I think the most common magical archetype is two-to-one: two parts Light to one part Dark. One-to-two, two parts Dark to one part Light, is also pretty common. True Gray wizards, one-to-one’s, are a bit more rare, but not by much. That’s what Dumbledore is, why he’s so powerful. He has _so_ much magic, and it’s all perfectly balanced within him.”

“And the people who aren’t mostly Gray?”

Tom licks his lips. “Three-to-one and one-to-three are considered Light and Dark instead of just Gray. Those wizards tend to produce pretty dodgy spellwork when they’re working with spells that don’t agree with them. That’s why Henry was going on about prejudice against Dark wizards the other day – they’re generally a minority of the population compared to Light wizards, and Hogwarts curriculum has traditionally favored teaching Light and Gray spells, simply because more of the population struggles with Dark stuff.”

“That’s what you are,” Harry says, noting the crease in Tom’s brow. “Dark.”

“Very Dark,” Tom growls. “Around one-to-thirteen, I think… For most of first and second year, my classmates were convinced I was just about a Squib, with how badly I struggled in Charms and Defense. Could barely light a _Lumos_. Might’ve been okay if I were someone else, but I just was the Mudblood of Slytherin whose _Incendio_ didn’t have enough power to light a candle.”

Tom has positioned himself against the wall, straight-backed and cross-legged, near-perfect in his cold, arrogant façade. “It’s strange,” Harry says, not knowing quite what to say and landing on sarcasm. “To imagine _you_ not being respected for your magical abilities.”

Tom looks at him, still perfectly poised, but a smile playing about his lips. “I _am_ exceptionally powerful, aren’t I?”

“Your power is matched only by your humbleness, good sir,” Harry rolls his eyes.

“Of course. Anyway, I was always really good with Potions and Herbology. In third year, though, we started working on basic invertebrate transfigurations, and it was _so easy_ for me. Dumbledore realized what that meant pretty quickly and started giving me private lessons on the Dark.”

“You and Dumbledore were… friends, weren’t you?” Harry has suspected since that first day in the Department of Mystery, with the familiarity of Dumbledore’s hand on Tom’s shoulder.

“I suppose we were,” Tom says woodenly, looking at the ceiling. “Not anymore.”

The diary-Riddle had been created sometime in Tom’s fifth year. What had changed, between now and then, to have twisted Tom into a monster? This Tom has some of the components of that crazed boy, hissing on the sodden floor of the Chamber. Add in some bloodthirst and the knowledge of his familial legacy, and – well, and Harry still has trouble imagining Tom killing Myrtle in cold blood. Perhaps one last summer at the orphanage would have broken him. Maybe another summer at the Dursleys would have broken Harry, too, come down to it. “Dumbledore didn’t _look_ like he wanted to cut you off, when we were at the Ministry.”

“The day I met you, I had just gone to him and begged that he let me stay with him over the summer. He always told me that if I had anything I needed, to just come to him and he’d help. At first, he was talking about bullies, and then – I don’t know, probably wanting to help me get in a good word with a crush or something. The old man thrived on setting students up with each other back in the day. So I thought, maybe, that he’d let me stay with him until the fall.”

“He said no,” Harry guesses. “I used to ask him if I could stay somewhere that wasn’t with my relatives, but he always said no to me, too. I suppose that explains how bloody homicidal you looked before you managed to explode my timeline…”

Tom splutters, abandoning his nice posture and letting his long legs flop out in front of him. “Surely you don’t blame me for all that time nastiness,” he says, so primly that Harry has to laugh.

“Tom Riddle,” he says, “you are not at all what I had expected.”

Tom looks _into_ him, and Harry feels his good humor fall away, frozen by the hollow fear in Tom’s eyes. “You _did_ ,” Tom says, raw. “You knew me – you knew a me who grew up fifty years ago.”

“If I did, the brand wouldn’t let me say anything about it,” Harry says, touching the scar Wormtail had left on his arm not so long ago.

“Of course,” Tom says, rubbing his eyes. “Harry, I don’t know if it matters at all to you, but I don’t want to be – whatever I was. Whatever I would become.”

“It matters,” Harry says honestly. He opens his mouth to say – something, he’s not sure what – but catches movement through the corner of his eyes, forms moving outside the window.

“What are they doing?” Tom says, bemused. They watch as the whole motley crew of uncles, James, and Lily pile out into the dusk, looking really exceedingly drunk. Tom cracks the window open so they can hear.

There’s Sirius’s laughter, rough and barking like Harry remembers, but without the frantic edge of Azkaban.

“I might have had a bit too much,” says James. “Won’t be able to change…”

“You all called in sick for tomorrow, didn’t you?” Remus sounds more sober than the others.

“’Course we did, Moony, we knew how smashed we were gonna get. It’s been so long since we had Worms with us, innit? Tonight is a night for celebration,” Sirius slurs, and then there’s a dog in his place, frisking across the lawn and _woof_ ing in the same tone as his human laugh.

“Sirius is an _Animagus_?” Tom says. “I knew he was magically accomplished, but that's _incredible_.”

Harry just points out the window, where a stag now stands, enormous and proud, a rat perched between its antlers. As they watch, Lily shifts into a blur of orange, and a lithe fox is bounding after Sirius-the-dog. In the next moment, Snape disappears, leaving something winged in his place – a hawk, maybe, with that wingspan? But the movements are all wrong. _A bat_ , Harry realizes with an incredulous laugh. _A really fucking enormous bat_.

Remus, ringed by drunken animals, sets off into the birch wood as the full moon rises above the trees. “Hell,” says Tom, watching the wolf emerge from Remus’s human form.

Harry just grins, watching the Marauders ride once more.

***

A few days later, Tom interrupts Ron’s gleeful viewing of Henry and Harry proving their equal incompetence at chess.

“Hey, Tom,” says Hermione, curled up in the sunlight with a book. “Do you know anything about Eastern runic arrays?”

By the time Tom’s extricated himself from a spirited debate over rune use in clothing, Harry’s finished barely losing to Henry. Tom makes some empty excuse and drags him away, leaving poor Henry at the mercy of Ron’s incomparable chess abilities.

“It’s been fourteen days since the manticore attack,” says Tom as he hauls Harry outside. “The grove will probably be okay with us helping out with the healing process.”

The forest tastes dry on Harry’s tongue. The still wrongness of it sends a shiver down his spine, and he hesitates on the threshold. But Tom seems relatively unconcerned, so Harry follows him into the shadows.

“It’s strange to be going into fifth year and not having a prefect’s badge,” Tom comments, rueful.

“Like Henry and Hermione?”

“I suppose it suites them,” Tom huffs. “It’s just, I mean, you know.”

“Jealous, Tom? Neither of us even have Houses yet, we weren’t exactly in the running for prefect duties,” Harry maneuvers around a nasty snarl of blackberries. “You must have recovered well from your stint as the Muggleborn Squib of Slytherin House, if you were so sure you’d make prefect.”

“By the end of my third year everyone was well aware of how much magic I have,” Tom says with relish. “No one in my year would have dared challenge me.”

Harry feels a little shiver, sensing echoes of the diary-Riddle’s smug superiority in this younger Tom.

“Plus, all the teachers _adored_ me, and the other boys in my class were brats,” he adds as they reach the little clearing with the wildflowers.

“So you’re a suck-up? Noted,” Harry says, mirroring Tom’s jump over the stream.

They quiet as they reach the grove. The grief of the trees seems to saturate the air around them, and Harry feels a headache burrowing into his temples.

The grove has healed slightly, starting to fill in the gaps in the canopy where blue peeks down on them. The standing stones are still a gravelly mess in the center of the clearing. Ambient magic weighs so heavily on Harry that he can hardly breathe; he imagines it streaming like dust in the sunbeams, swirling up to the clouds.

The song vibrates through Harry, like he’s a harp string being plucked in time. This is a bloody, bloody place. The ground seems to shiver with history, with the agony of loss. It’s overwhelming. Something in him screams.

Tom sits under one of the larger oaks, like he’s meditating or something. He’s crying again.

At a loss for what to do with himself, Harry pulls his wand out, sets about reconstructing the standing stones and clearing away the branches left behind by the dead trees.

Hardly an hour passes before Tom gets up and they return to the clearing across the stream. “Sorry to interrupt your cleanup,” Tom says, sitting down amidst the starry little flowers. “I was feeding them some of my magic, but it’s really taxing to interface so directly with a being in that much distress.” He dabs at his eyes with his handkerchief.

“Tom,” Harry says, to distract him. “How did you do that spell you tried on me in our duel, the thing where you took all the green out of the grass?”

“It wasn’t a spell,” says Tom. “Not really. How about this: I’ll teach it to you if you teach me how to fly a broom.”

“Deal,” Harry says, and they shake on it, scars slotting together near-perfectly.

After allowing themselves another moment to rest from carrying the tree’s anguish, they return to the grove. Tom does his best to help Harry with his branch-clearing efforts, demonstrating plainly that his _Wingardium Leviosa_ is, indeed, laughable. Harry puts him on leaf-clearing duty and handles the wood fragments himself.

They return to the Potter home covered in dirt, Tom’s hair sticking up on one side and covered in leaves on the other. James groans and says something about banning them from any more forest explorations, but Lily just waves them off with a command to go take a shower.

“Thank you,” Tom says before they go to sleep that night.

Harry scowls into the darkness. “For what?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey look, a tentative friendship! Also, exposition... for some reason I felt the need to throw my (ostrich-feathered) hat into the "wait but what even is Dark magic tho" ring. Questions on that front are welcomed.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your comments, kudos, or just for reading this far. It's so exciting to see that other people are interested in this project!  
> 🦌


	6. The Sorting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom go to the Ministry to be re-Sorted, Unspeakables are still creepy as hell, and the summer comes to a close.

The very next morning, Harry looks out the window to see another perfect day. The ideal weather, he decides, to teach Tom how to fly a broom.

He tears Tom out of bed, plies some breakfast out of Rooke, and drags his new pupil along to the broom shed.

Tom regards his Nimbus with caution. “You know, Harry, I’m starting to think this was actually a rather poor idea.”

“We shook on it, it’s too late to back out now. Besides, you heard James on our first night: Potters fly!”

Tom has no argument for that, but it turns out he’s more of a lost cause than Hermione.

After five minutes of watching Tom’s broom roll about on the ground rather than come to his hand, Harry sighs. “Maybe we’re better off skipping to the flying part, and then maybe we can give arguing with the broom another go.”

“Fine,” says Tom darkly, plucking the Nimbus off the grass. Robotically, he straddles the broom and wraps white-knuckled hands around the handle.

“You learned that posture from a book, didn’t you,” says Harry, laughing away Tom’s scowl.

He adjusts Tom’s grip as gently as he can, then climbs onto his own broom.

“Close your eyes and imagine the broom is just an, er, tree branch. Sturdy, connected to the ground, just as solid in the air as you are on your feet.”

“Okay,” Tom’s mouth is set in a nervous frown.

“Good. Now, when you’re ready, just bend your knees and lift your feet up.”

Tom sits very still for at least another minute before, screwing up his closed eyes with concentration, he slips into an awkward squat.

“You need to trust the broom’s magic to hold you up,” laughs Harry. “This is a very expensive piece of spellwork, it’s not going to hurt you no matter how badly you screw up.”

Tom lances him with a look of profound doubt.

“Here,” Harry rolls his eyes. “Watch me do it.” He climbs onto his broom, standing like Tom is, and very carefully lifts his boots up off the ground. “Flying is like any other kind of magic. It seems strange when you haven’t quite figured it out yet, but once you understand its rules it feels as simple as walking. Like, changing your center of mass changes the direction in which the broom accelerates, and squeezing the handle tells it where to turn, but you’ve always got to be mindful of the wind. That’s why I’m so good, I think, is because I understand the wind…”

Tom is frowning at him. “I know all that. I read every book the library had on flying.” He’s frustrated, and Harry can’t help but feel a bit put out by that. It’s just that flight is something that comes so easily to him, and it’s hard to explain something he’s used to doing without hardly having to think.

“There’s a difference between knowing and understanding,” is all he says. “Try again. I think you can do this.”

Tom closes his eyes again. Harry watches his chest surge in a deep in-out breath, then cautiously lift up his feet. A sudden grin eats across his face. “Harry – Harry! I’ve done it! What do I do now?”

“Bloody brilliant job, Tom,” he says, beaming. “Let’s ascend a bit, yeah?”

They never go above the tree line, and Tom’s flight is wobblier even than Neville’s impromptu joyride during their first year – which is saying something given that he’s on a Nimbus. But Tom is so clearly enjoying himself that Harry can’t count the attempt as anything but a success.

When he finally peeks through the kitchen window and glimpses Lily watching them over a cup of tea, they finally dismount and return inside. Tom’s hair is windswept, his cheeks flushed. For a moment, Harry can almost forget the nightmare that he’d seen crawl out of that cauldron in the graveyard.

Rooke offers them a tray of biscuits. Tom nibbles thoughtfully on a chocolate-looking one. “I like flying. I kind of thought I wouldn’t.”

Lily laughs at Tom and leaves them to their biscuits.

“Just wait,” Harry says drily, selecting a pretty orange biscuit. “Next thing you know you’ll be playing Death-Star-Death-Battle- Fight? That. You’ll be playing _that_ with the best of us.”

“Oh, Christ, I’m not sure if I’m ready for Geoff to see me flying.”

“Ugh, pumpkin spice. It’s not even autumn yet,” Harry puts his biscuit down.

As they head back upstairs, Tom grabs an orangey biscuit of his own. He sits on his bed and eats it, humming, and manages to get a nary crumb on the blankets. “So, you wanted to learn how to do the pigment trick?”

Harry watches as he swirls his wand in a careless loop, snatching some of the rich navy from his covers and sending it around his head. “Er, Tom, I know we got away with the whole manticore thing – and the whole dueling in the woods thing – but I think this qualifies as frivolous underage magic use.”

“According to James,” Tom says, returning the blue to the blanket, “the Ministry doesn’t actually enforce those laws unless the offense occurs near Muggles.” Harry thinks of an engorged Marge rolling away into the abyss of the sky. “So we can do whatever we want, as long as we don’t tell James’s kids. He doesn’t want to deal with magic-aided chaos from Henry and Geoff.”

“Not to mention Dahlia in two years.” They both shudder at the thought.

“Ugh, exactly. So, let’s see. Um, the pigment thing isn’t actually a spell, it’s just something I did as a kid that I figured out how to do with my wand, too.”

“Like accidental magic, but on purpose?”

“Precisely. From what I can figure, wizards tend to abandon that style of casting by the time they’re old enough to get a wand… I never did. Magic is a lot more flexible than they teach us at school.”

“I always thought accidental magic was a bit embarrassing for Hogwarts-aged kids, like bed-wetting or something,” Dudley had wet the bed until he was twelve. “I blew up my aunt two years ago and got threatened with expulsion.”

Tom blinks, eyes wide. “Damnation, Potter. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Blew her up like a balloon, not a bomb. She lived.” _Unfortunately_.

“Well, _that’s_ fine, then,” Tom says, rolling his eyes. “I got one of those letters last summer. Muggle pushed me a bit too hard and I accidentally set every animal in the building on him.”

“So how do I do the pigment thing?”

“Practice,” Tom leeches the color in and out of the knees of his trousers. “We should start with something more particular to you, I think. What sort of accidental magic did you do before you knew you were a wizard? Or was inflating people habitual?”

“With my aunt and uncle it was mostly little things, y’know, returning stuff to the status quo after they tried to mess it up. They’d try to cut my hair and it would just regrow, or give me clothes I didn’t like and they would get too small for me. When I was out of the house things got weirder… there were a couple of incidents of changing teacher’s hair funny colors, and once I animated someone’s wig. It acted like a spider or something, did a little dance. I think I Apparated once or twice by accident… always ended up on the roof. And then there was the thing with the glass,” Harry grins. “I think by that point I must have been directing the magic a bit. That incident couldn’t have gone more perfectly if I’d planned it.”

“I have some ideas to try,” Tom says, “but you can’t just call something an _incident_ and then not explain what happened.”

Harry tells him the story of the zoo, the Burmese python, and the vanishing glass. Leaving in the part about the ice cream and not mentioning his subsequent internment in the closet, it makes for quite a good story, and Tom is in stiches by the end. It’s strange – Harry had never talked about his time with the Dursleys with any of his classmates, even Ron and Hermione. But Tom understands what it is to be raised without the stability of loving parents. This story wouldn’t have been funny to any of his friends from his first timeline, because they would be too distracted by the horrific abuse.

“I wonder where the python is now… hitchhiking its way home? Perhaps it’s become a snake-y freedom fighter, liberating its fellows from cages all about the world!” Tom wipes his eyes, smiling.

“Yeah, maybe,” Harry says, still caught up in the realization of how deeply disturbed he and Tom are. He’s not sure if that means they’re good for each other or if this weird maybe-friendship has just doomed them to spend the rest of their lives giggling in corners while functioning members of society kept well away.

“I think you may have some affinity for hair magic,” Tom says very seriously. “So we should start out trying that –”

Someone knocks on the door. Tom very hurriedly restores the floral pattern to the carpet.

“Come in,” says Harry.

Geoff careens in, all freckles and long limbs. “Mum said _you_ ,” he points at Tom, “were learning to fly. And didn’t invite me.”

Tom groans and falls back against his pillows. “I suppose hair magic shall have to wait.”

***

They’re coming back from another expedition to the wood when James corners them.

“I know there are deer in the woods,” Tom is saying, “and the oaks really do need some blood to keep themselves going… I mean, you saw how excited they got about that little knock on your head!”

“They were excited about the great horrible gaping wound in my abdomen, actually,” Harry says. “Tom, I just don’t know if I’m comfortable with –”

“Hello, boys!”

“James! Er, we thought you were at work today.”

“I was. The Unspeakables sent me a memo telling me to come home and get you two and Henry.”

“Do they usually do things at this late notice?” Tom asks, irritated.

“They did say they’d be asking for Harry around two months after they let you two out. But, yeah. They seem to think it makes them more mysterious or whatever by not giving anyone prior notice of appointments.”

“I get why they need to talk with me,” Harry says. “But why Henry and Tom?”

“I think they want to take care of the Sorting while you’re in,” James nods at Tom, “but I have no earthly idea why they want Henry.”

 _The Sorting_. Tom feels the hair on his forearms stand on end. He follows in a daze as they collect Henry, then head out through the Floo into the cacophony of the Ministry Atrium. A hooded figure is waiting to bring them down into the bowels of the government.

Henry looks around eagerly as they enter the obsidian halls of the Department of Mysteries. Harry just looks grim and ready for a fight.

The first Unspeakable drops them off in a nondescript room with another pair of shadowy figures.

One of the new figures claps gloved fingers in delight. _Unspeakable Spavin_ , he recognizes with dismay.

“James told me you boys are settling in well! I’m so glad. Now, first order of business: James, Tom, you sit here and entertain yourselves. Henry, Harry, we’re going to run some fun tests on the both of you. Please follow Unspeakable Fawley.”

The Unspeakable who had collected them from the Atrium positions themselves next to the door as the other files out. Harry gives Tom a meaningful look that probably means something along the lines of ‘ugh, not these idiots again.’

Tom strangles his answering smile and retreats into icy contemplation. This place has him deeply uneasy, bringing back the grim horror of being pinned on an operating table, the smell of Harry’s flesh burning with the brand. James makes a valiant attempt to engage him in conversation, but after enough tense, monosyllabic responses, he gives up and leaves Tom to his miserable remembrances.

After what feels like an eternity of letting the cold of the obsidian flooring seep into his bones, the Unspeakables return with Harry and Henry, both looking intact.

“James, you may escort Henry home and return to your place of work,” Spavin says. Fawley nods, making some kind of notation on their clipboard.

“I can’t just leave the kids here,” James rises to his feet.

“Of course you can, Auror Potter. I assure you they will be able to navigate the Floo on their own if they put their minds to it. Your continued presence is extraneous to our procedures.”

“As their legal guardian, it’s my duty to stick around and make sure they’re okay,” James stands hood-to-face with Spavin. The air hums with his anger. “If Lily were here, she’d hex you into oblivion for even suggesting we leave them alone with you again.”

“Unfortunately,” Spavin says, backing up rather quickly, “we do plan to keep Harry overnight. So, it really will be most efficient for everyone if you just go back up to Magical Law and let us do our work in peace –”

“ _Overnight_!” James roars. “Has the Minister authorized this?”

“The Minister has given me full oversight on this case. And yes, overnight – I wouldn’t expect you to know much about soul magic, Auror Potter, but if you did you would certainly agree with me that Harry needs to be under strict observation after the procedure to remove his parasite.”

“James?” Tom ventures with all the calm he can muster. “She’s right, I think. This is the equivalent of a Muggle surgery done on Harry’s soul. I, of course, don’t know all that much about soul magic, but the reading I’ve done suggests it can be extremely delicate.” This is a lie. He knows a great deal about soul magic, but that’s not the kind of thing one admits to in the heart of the Ministry, with an Auror, three Unspeakables, and two eldest Potter sons as witness.

“Precisely,” Spavin says, puffing up under her cloak. “And we’ll be keeping Tom overnight, too. Partly because he’ll probably want to stay, and partly because we want to observe him, too.”

Henry squints. “I may have no idea what’s going on, but that makes zero sense.”

“Young Mister Potter, I promise that one day you’ll understand the importance of hanging on to valuable test subjects as long as they’ll let you have them…”

Tom thinks of the tip of the giant squid’s tentacle that Geoff had showed him, stashed in a filthy little aquarium under Henry’s bed. He’s not remotely surprised when Henry concedes Spavin’s point.

“They’re children, not test subjects,” James tries.

“They can be both,” Henry says, shrugging. “Harry, Tom, I’ll see you tomorrow. C’mon, Dad, I need to go look up what N.E.W.T.s I need to get to become an Unspeakable!”

“Traitor,” Harry murmurs.

“Sometimes,” Tom whispers back, “your greatest enemy is yourself…”

Harry snorts. Tom feels his mood rise a bit, despite the way this place grinds on him. Spavin conjures them a pair of stools. “We’ll get you two Sorted next; Fawley’s getting the Hat.”

Tom feels the ice in his stomach return in a rush. Harry glances at him, Tom’s nerves mirrored in his mind.

“Explain to me again why we can’t just bow to the wisdom of our original Sorting?” Tom asks into the silence.

Spavin clucks. “Sorting theory is hardly my area of expertise, but I’ll do my best. Both of you experienced what we call a ‘wartime Sort’… you see, the Hat weighs both individual educational needs and family allegiances in Sorting a child. In times of war, Sortings often dictate what side of the battlefield a wizard will end up on. So, when Britain finds itself at war, the Hat favors family history above all else. That way, even when we murder each other, we’ll be less likely to be killing our siblings!”

“That’s really fucked up,” Harry notes.

“Yes. Yes, it is. But in this time, we are not at war. Each of your original houses suited you fine in your bloodier versions of the Wizarding World, but to achieve your full potential we will re-Sort you for your final years. Time traveler’s protocol echo-17 subsection diamond!”

Tom is fairly certain Spavin has made up most of these time travel protocols. “I’m muggleborn. I don’t have a family allegiance. Shouldn’t my Slytherin Sorting still be accurate?”

Before Spavin can say anything, the door to the hallway swings open to allow for Fawley and the Hat.

The Sorting Hat is as raggedy as Tom remembers, but at the same time less so than he would imagine after fifty more years of wear. “Tom Riddle,” it says with relish. “I thought I’d be seeing you again one of these days. And – oh. Oh, I see.”

Harry’s hands curl into fists.

“Mister – ah, Mister Partridge. May I?” says Spavin, taking the Hat from Fawley with reverence and placing it carefully on Harry’s head. It fits just well enough that Tom can glimpse his eyes, pressed closed.

Tom watches Harry’s mouth instead, twitching and thinning, his frown growing deeper with every passing minute. “I can’t remember seeing anyone take quite this long.”

“Hatstall,” Spavin remarks, consulting a thick gold timepiece from deep in her robes. “Hogwarts sees one every two or three years, and the Ministry _has_ noted the phenomenon becomes more common in subjects of a more advanced age.”

Still watching Harry’s mouth, Tom sees the exact moment when the Hat decides. Harry’s sneering, reaching up to snatch the mangy thing off his head, just before the rip above its brim opens to call “SLYTHERIN!” in a tone far too loud for the echoey little Ministry room.

“There’s been a mistake,” Harry says as the Hat comes off. “Slytherin is against my family allegiances _and_ does not provide a learning environment that will be useful for me. Or whatever.”

“Oh, yes, Ravenclaw and Slytherin do have that little rivalry going on right now, don’t they?” hums Spavin. “You’ll be at odds with dear Henry… how entertaining.”

“I’m a _Gryffindor_ ,” Harry insists.

Tom blinks. “You are?”

“Haven’t we been over this?”

“Christ, I actually don’t think we have. Um, _I’m_ a Slytherin. We’re not that bad,” Tom says vacantly, reeling. How strange – in the haze of summer, Houses had been the last thing from his mind. If he had to guess, he would have pegged Harry as a Ravenclaw, just because Harry is Henry and Henry is so, _so_ Ravenclaw.

“Tom, I _know_ you’re a Slytherin… were a Slytherin… _whatever_! It’s your turn, anyway.”

And Harry slumps back onto his stool, tossing Tom the ratty old Hat. Gingerly, he places it on his head. It fits perfectly. “ _Hello, Tom. It’s good to see you._ ”

There is nothing good about this situation. Tom just wants to be told he can go back to Slytherin.

“ _Ah, but Slytherin wasn’t quite right for you, though, was it? You needed an environment that would foster your ambition while offering you a strong support system, Tom. No, I still think you would have gone far in Hufflepuff…_ ”

Tom bristles. He was raised on a diet of harsh words and revenge – the last thing he needed as a child was a ‘strong support system.’ People have said many things about Tom Riddle, but never that he was _soft_.

“ _But you’ve known kindness this summer, my boy. A family. And look at you – you’ve thrived. You’ve always been destined for power. You don’t need Slytherin to help you on that path._ ”

Perhaps he doesn’t _need_ Slytherin, but Hufflepuff offers him nothing – and Slytherin is his home. Tom thinks of Harry, sitting in Tom’s favorite armchair and looking out into the depths of the lake, as Tom himself gets shunted off to learn the virtue of hard work. Something clenches in his stomach.

“ _Don’t worry, Tom. Though I stand by my original beliefs about the suitability of Hufflepuff for you, I won’t be separating you from Harry Potter. You have a role to play in the years to come, and your House will not matter in the brewing conflict._ ”

Tom exhales shakily. So it will return him to Slytherin. Still, there’s something he doesn’t understand: if the Hat had so wanted him in Hufflepuff, why had it originally placed him in Slytherin? Upon his initial Sorting, Tom hadn’t held any preconceived notions of what House he might prefer.

“ _Family allegiances, my dear boy._ ”

Something cold and tight laces around Tom, strangling the breath from his lungs. What does it know – who _is he_?

“ _I do believe our time together is now coming to a close. Let me leave you with a reminder that while your specific abilities make you immune to overt manipulation, they also make your mind very open to the thoughts and feelings of those around you. When you are surrounded by love, you can find the good in yourself. Surround yourself by fear, and it will overcome you. Just promise me this much, Tom: pick your friends carefully. They will shape you._ ” It pauses, waiting for his silent agreement, before shouting, “SLYTHERIN” once more.

“Well, there you are,” Tom says, pulling the Hat off his head and brushing invisible dust off his robes to hide his trembling hands. “My first Sort was accurate.”

“Can I have another go?” Harry says. “I thought I’d just about convinced it I could get along okay in Hufflepuff.”

“What, you’d rather _Hufflepuff_ than Slytherin?”

“I always liked the ‘Puffs. They have more chill than the other three Houses combined.”

Tom doesn’t know quite what it means to have ‘chill’, so he just sneers and crosses his legs.

The Unspeakables seem not to have paid any attention to their squabbling. They’ve gathered around Fawley’s clipboard and seem rather excited about something.

“Er,” Harry says, “is something the matter?”

The hooded figures turn in terrifying unison. “Just a confirmed hypothesis,” says Spavin. “It’s almost as though – Merlin, if they would only let us dissect that Hat…”

Tom finds himself gripping the Hat protectively to his chest.

Spavin tsks. “Never mind that now, though. Harry, come along. Tom, we’ll let you watch the procedure if you let us watch you sleep. Deal?”

“Very well,” Tom says stiffly, finding his curiosity stronger than his pettiness. A wonder, really, that the Hat never even entertained the possibility of Ravenclaw.

***

The Unspeakables pin Harry down to a bed of the same make as the one he’d woken up in nearly two months past. He swallows bile, watching Fawley ink runes across the walls. Tom, who they have given a chair in the corner, is the most familiar thing in the room, but the lighting in the Department of Mysteries washes the color from his face and leaves him looking as sickly and skeletal as he had months ago, looming over a newly-awoken Harry in the wake of their temporal misadventures. Unnerved, Harry returns to watching the runes spreading around him.

“Take this,” Spavin hands him a vial of lilac potion. “Soul Pacifying drought. It’ll make your soul go still so we can perform the surgery with minimal fuss.”

“‘Go still’? Is that dangerous?”

“Probably not,” Spavin says, cocking her hooded head to the side. “But it will send you into a dreamless sleep, so if you die it won’t be painful.”

Tom’s eyes widen. He seems almost worried.

“Doesn’t sound like a bad way to go out,” Harry downs the vial. The last thing he sees before his consciousness shuts down is Tom biting his lip, cheekbones awash in pale light.

***

“Harry? Harry Potter? You still in there?”

Harry’s scar throbs. He feels like there’s a crack running all through him, head to chest to knees, and his forehead is the impact point. Or perhaps he’s a pig roasting on a spit, and there is something wooden driven through his skull all the way down to his anus. He wishes someone had thought to have killed him before breaking his body, but there is just no common courtesy these days… everyone just wants to be the next Dark Lord.

He hears a murmured spell, then, “yeah, he’s awake. Harry, do you want some painkillers?”

At his grunted assent, they roll him onto his back and pour a nasty-tasting potion down his throat.

“Ugh,” Harry says, pushing himself into a sitting position. “Why did an operation on my soul hurt my body so badly?”

“We had to put you through a physical procedure, as well. The parasite was of a different nature than we first suspected.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, Mister Partridge. But it’s over on the table if you want to take a look. We’re going to have such fun studying the little guy!”

The table Spavin refers to is little and rolling, like in a Muggle surgeon’s room. Between bloody scalpels and scary noodle-looking devices, a jar holds what looks like red ink in water. Harry puts his hand up to his scar, finding it raw and lumpy. “Is that blood _mine_?”

“Indeed. Now, I agreed that we would return you this morning, but I’m going to keep you here for another couple of hours to see what effects removing the Hor – your parasite might have in the long term.”

At her prodding, Harry hauls his numb body off the operating table, finding himself in a hospital gown yet again. Fawley twirls their wand, and the room around them shifts dizzyingly, settling as a larger space that Harry recognizes as the room where the Unspeakables had brought he and Henry last night.

“Let’s repeat those magical exercise we had you work on yesterday afternoon,” Spavin summons a mass to the floor in front of Harry. “ _Wingardium Leviosa_ , holding it steady at eye level for as long as you can.”

Harry spells the mass, executes basic Transfigurations, and a dozen other displays of menial magic that have the Unspeakables humming and scribbling.

“Did you notice any changes to your magic?” Spavin asks after they’ve run him through all the same tests as the previous day.

“Nope.”

“Neither did we. Interesting…”

“Can I leave now?”

Spavin frowns down at her clipboard and confers with her colleagues. Harry wishes they would let him change back into actual clothing. “Well,” Spavin says with reluctance, scanning back over her notes. “I don’t believe we have anything we can’t wait until next session to deal with.”

To his vast relief, they give Harry back his clothes and deposit him with Tom, who had supposedly been asleep.

“Good God, you look awful,” Tom says to Harry, looking both very awake and exceptionally manic.

“You’re one to talk – did you sleep at all last night?”

Tom pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs heavily. “I had a lot on my mind. Would’ve had trouble sleeping even if I didn’t know there were people watching me very intently from somewhere unseen.”

“Let’s go home, yeah?” says Harry, kind of wanting to touch Tom’s arm but also thinking that would be inappropriate.

“Yeah,” Tom smiles through the bags under his eyes.

***

They fall through the Potters’ Floo late enough in the morning that both James and Lily are at work, but Dahlia is there waiting for them in the little sitting area. She blinks at them through dark eyes as first Harry, then Tom stumble in through the fireplace.

“Did they hurt you, Harry?” she says, her voice small.

“Not in any way that can’t be fixed with drugs,” Harry yawns, then pauses, remembering his audience. “Er, not like that. I mean pain numbing potions.”

Dahlia tugs on his sleeve to get him to kneel down to her level. She presses the cold back of her hand to his scar, frowning. “I think your nightmares might get better, now. They’ve been bad lately, haven’t they?”

Harry flinches. Tom, sharing a room with him these past three weeks, has taken it upon himself to wake Harry from bad dreams. It’s been bad enough to disturb Tom’s sleep, but the thought that he might have woken Dahlia, sleeping across the hall, guilts him. Tom at least seems to get a kick out of attempting to decipher a sleeping Harry’s ramblings, and Harry has come to peace with the inevitability of disturbing his rest. Dahlia, though… “They have been worse,” he tells her. “More… abstract.”

Dahlia bites her lip and throws her arms around his neck. “I’m so glad you’re here with us.”

“I – I am too, Dahl.”

The boys come thundering in a moment later, having heard the Floo roar to life. Tom lets Geoff hug him, and they all curl up in the little reception room to play Exploding Snap until their fingers go numb and the cold misery of the Department of Mysteries fades from Harry’s mind.

James and Lily get home early – it’s a Friday, after all – and nearly stumble over the five children playing cards in front of the fire. “Woah there,” James laughs, Lily holding him up. “We’ve been over the whole sitting in front of the Floo thing, haven’t we? I feel like this was a recurring problem at some point.”

“It was,” says Dahlia solemnly. “I used to sit on this rug for hours when I knew Uncle Sev was coming.”

“You still do some days,” Lily grumbles, dodging Geoff to reach the hallway. “I’m glad to see you boys are in one piece,” she directs at Harry and Tom. “James had me worried they were going to send you two back in matchboxes.”

Tom laughs darkly. Harry rubs his scar.

They shuffle off to the kitchen, James having declared it dinner time.

“So,” James says casually as they all settle down and Rooke starts banging dishes around. “How did the Sorting go, kids?”

“Slytherin,” says a smug Tom.

Henry rolls his eyes. “Obviously. And Harry?”

“ _Also_ Slytherin.” Tom grins over at Dahlia, who is laughing at James, who is goggling at Harry.

Henry considers Harry for a moment, then says, “yeah, I see it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” huffs Harry.

James groans. “You were meant to be my legacy in Gryffindor, kiddo! How is Geoff meant to live up to my name all on his own?”

Geoff puffs himself up. “I live up to your name fine, Dad! I’m going to make Beater this year, I just know it.”

“Maybe Dahl will be in Gryffindor,” Lily says mildly.

Dahlia sticks out her tongue. “Nope. Dad said all they do is ‘get high and get laid.’ I’m afraid of heights and naps are for babies.”

There’s a moment of shocked silence, then Henry, Geoffrey, and James break into identical guffaws, joined by Lily’s cackling. Tom mostly still just looks shocked. Harry, though – Harry’s looking at little Dahlia, at the small, knowing smile on her lips. What a strange ten-year-old.

As Rooke serves a dinner of sprouts, potatoes, and beans, the Potters settle into the relative peace of watching Henry and Tom sling jibes at each other’s Houses. Harry goes to bed feeling an eternity away from the dark sterility of the Department of Mysteries, save for the strange lightness in the scar on his forehead.

Still, there’s an unease resting in his gut as he waits for sleep that night. “Tom? Are you still awake?”

“I have more than enough to keep me awake tonight.”

“I just keep thinking about the manticore attack… the rider must be traceable, right? How many magicals in Britain can say they’re capable of taming a manticore?”

Tom goes silent for a moment. “I think you might have some sort of risk-avoidance dysfunction. I mean, anyone would think you _want_ to fight that monster again. And then – do you know how many times they thought you were a goner last night? They didn’t even let me stay for the whole procedure, but Harry, that thing in your scar was doing its very best to take you out with it.”

“Okay,” Harry says, “that’s disturbing and all, but I think if we put our minds to it, we can crack this manticore thing – I mean, what if it comes back to the grove?”

“Harry – you could have died. You _should_ have died. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“I should have died a lot of times in my life,” he laughs into the darkness, half at the irony of it all. “If I let it get to me, I wouldn’t be able to function.”

***

The peace in the Potter household lasts for nearly a week. Harry and Tom find a nest of rabbits in the birch woods, but can’t quite bring themselves to kill any for the oaks to drink.

“Not much blood in them anyway,” says Tom, hoisting up a petrified female by the ears.

“Nah, we’d be better off snagging a deer or something,” Harry agrees, hiding a sigh of relief.

Tom gets Harry to watch through the whole _Star Wars_ trilogy with him and Geoff, and this time around Harry can kind of see the appeal of the laser battles and energy swords. “I reckon you could find a spell to do something like that,” Harry says, waving his wand about in an imitation of a lightsaber. Tom gets a funny look in his eyes. “No plotting,” Harry tells him in between _vrrrrrrrm_ s.

As they grow closer and closer to the end of August, though, tensions rise. Henry has taken to lugging their Dark Studies textbook around with him, telling Lily, “If I don’t study extra hard, Severus will think I’m an idiot, Mother! I can’t let that happen!” The same attitude seems to have infected Geoff and Tom, one of whom copes by flying frantic Beater drills around the house.

“You’re turning into a bloody Ravenclaw,” Harry says the third time he finds the other of the two holed up in his room, combing through his schoolbooks with religious fervor. “Let’s go give flying another go, yeah? I think it’ll be a lot more therapeutic than whatever this is supposed to be.”

Tom hisses, more like an irritable cat than a snake, and Harry, rolling his eyes, gives up and leaves him alone in favor of sitting with Dahlia.

“Watcha drawing?” he asks, flopping down on the living room floor next to her.

She blinks, slow and considering. “Horses.”

“Cool.”

They have two more nights at the Potters’. Two more nights of the best summer of his life – he can’t even properly look forward to returning to Hogwarts. Not when this funny overgrown cottage feels so much like home, not when he knows he’s not returning to Gryffindor.

He naps the rest of the afternoon away, sleepily aware of the shifting of sunbeams in the room and Dahlia’s quiet presence.

And then: “Harry Partridge! There you are. I believe things have reached a crisis point. Get up here.”

Harry yawns and cracks his toes. Stupid, loud Tom wrinkles his nose, which is what he _gets_. “What do you want?”

Dahlia eyes him judgmentally. “You’ve been asleep almost three hours, Harry. I haven’t taken a nap that long since I was _five_. It was high time someone got you up.”

“You could have woken me yourself if it was bothering you that much…”

“That’s _Tom’s_ job. Right, Tom?”

“You are the most bizarre child I’ve ever met,” says Tom. “C’mon, Po-Partridge. We’re going to test my theory from earlier.”

“You have a lot of _theories_ ,” Harry protests, following Tom anyway. “That means almost nothing to me anymore.”

Tom closes the door to their room and glowers. “Now, what I’m about to tell you is difficult for me to believe, but I have to bow in the force of overwhelming evidence.”

Harry makes himself comfortable on his bed. In private, Tom is a big fan of dramatic tirades that make him sound a lot more upset than he actually feels. Some days, they make him think of a moon-pale half-man raving in a misty graveyard. Today, though, Harry is too distracted by the shadows under Tom’s eyes and the way he keeps running his hands through his too-long hair.

Harry senses that Tom is winding up to his conclusion and tunes back in to, “between animated wigs, your grandfather’s livelihood, and the look of you even after hours of flying, I have no choice but to conclude that you have a certain affinity for hair magic.”

“I thought that was a joke the first time you said it!”

“A cosmic joke, perhaps. You have absolutely the worst hair of anyone I’ve ever known, but I honestly think that’s because _you like it that way_.”

“Er,” Harry clutches a pillow for safety. “I don’t think that’s how it works, Tom.”

“Hair magic,” Tom says. “Very Dark. Difficult to tell when it’s at work. And yet, _Henry’s_ hair is much better-behaved than yours. How is that possible? Same genetic makeup. Same shampoo. The only answer, Mister Potter, is that the sheer awfulness of your hair is maintained by magic.”

Harry pats his head, self-conscious. “Wouldn’t I, like, know if I were spelling it this way?”

“We’ll have time to test the specifics later,” Tom slumps back into his bed, apparently done with his drama. “For now, I really need a haircut. I don’t think I can stand the shame of going back to Hogwarts with this mop on my head.”

Harry blinks. Haircuts aren’t something he’s really ever needed – oh. Maybe Tom’s crackpot ‘hair magic’ theory isn’t all that far off. “Why didn’t you say something earlier? I’ll bet James and Lily could have gotten you in to see a professional hairdresser.”

Tom ruffles his hair, rueful. “I kind of thought I’d like to grow it out a bit. The nuns used to cut it short every summer to reduce chances for a lice outbreak, so getting to have it long was sort of a way of proving to myself that I really didn’t ever have to go back. It just turns out I like having it a lot shorter than this.”

“You have been looking a bit scraggly,” Harry says, then sees the look of genuine hurt on Tom’s face and backpedals. “I swear, your vanity will be the death of you one of these days – don’t make that face! You can totally pull off the slightly long hair, I swear, I just feel like the look clashes with your personal style a bit.”

“Just fix it, idiot.”

Harry tries his best to do something with his magic, but in the end neither of them quite trust him not to make matters worse. Instead, they dig up a pair of scissors from Lily’s office and do things the Muggle way in front of the mirror. Harry does his best to give Tom his desired short-but-not-too-short cut, and Tom declares their efforts to be a reasonable success.

They go to sleep late that night, after hours of watching the summer stars spark to life.

***

The night before their return to Hogwarts, they go over for dinner at the Burrow.

The Weasley’s home has barely changed in the switch between timelines. Chickens still wander out front. The building is still dense with magic and looking about ready to topple over.

But there’s evidence of Arthur’s better-paying job in the freshly painted Ford Angela displayed proudly outside, the new room built into the side of the house, and the less threadbare robes of the Weasleys themselves. Harry has gathered that the ‘tricity box’ Ron had explained to him in Diagon had not existed in his original time; it had apparently driven the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department into prominence decades ago, giving Arthur the recognition he had always deserved.

Ron takes it upon himself to ‘introduce’ Harry and Tom to Percy, Fred, and George. Tom and Percy get on nauseatingly well. The twins seem different in this timeline in a way Harry doesn’t fully understand, but makes him uncomfortable.

He’s itchy with that feeling all evening – his memories of the Burrow are some of his fondest from home, but there are so many things here that are simply _off_. The confluence of all these people: this family who Harry has loved since a cloudy September years ago; and the laughing, breathing Potters; and then Tom, quiet and clever and deadly at his side – it’s all too much.

Henry and Ron wander off during dessert and come back with Hermione and Malfoy in tow. The strangeness of it all sets Harry off his treacle tart. They all retire to the living room, and he finds himself alone in the corner, sulking on a leather sofa he can’t remember the Weasleys owning before.

Hermione and Ron are seated across from each other in front of the fire, in those same chairs they always used to favor. Between them is Harry’s own favorite chair. Almost on autopilot, he readies himself to get up and see his friends, but in the next moment Henry is sitting down in Harry’s chair, and Ron and Hermione’s body language unfurls to welcome him, and a laughing Malfoy is perching himself on the wide arm of Henry’s seat.

The hurt of it blitzes through Harry for a long, breathless moment. He entertains the possibility of just nipping around them and taking the Floo back home, to escape this crowded room of happy, bright people –

Tom slips onto the sofa beside him, having apparently gotten tired of talking with Percy about differing publishing practices in academia throughout time. “You excited to get back to Hogwarts?”

If being at the Burrow is this bad, Harry doesn’t know how it’ll feel to return to an alien Hogwarts. Still, though – he really has missed the castle, moldering and wonderful, buzzing with the echoes of generations of children. He looks up at Tom, with his newly flattering haircut, face softened by firelight. “Yeah. I suppose I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next stop: Hogwarts!
> 
> Thank you for reading. I would love to hear your thoughts on the chapter (from flying lessons to conversations with the Hat to sUDdeN ANgsT)!
> 
> Emoji of the day:  
> 🐘


	7. Snakes on a Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry, Tom, and the Potters return to Hogwarts.

**Part II: We Have Emanated from Birches**

The first of September dawns damp and miserable. James and Lily have struck some kind of deal with the Weasleys that involves Flooing over at nine in the morning, suitcases in tow, and piling into the back of Mr. Weasley’s ‘perfectly safe’ flying blue car. Tom doesn’t mind, at first; rooming with Harry has turned him into a bit of an early riser, he doesn’t exactly have a lot of material possessions, and the car is a _magic future_ car, which is just exciting.

But then Death Star, deciding that she is very much not in favor of Floo travel, starts screeching, and a pouring rain sputters into being as soon as they step out the door, and Tom has to share the back seat with the combined might of the Potter and Weasley clans.

Ron, squished in next to him, laughs. “You’ve not even met my oldest brothers. I don’t think the expansion charms back here could hold up against the entirety of our family.”

“The expansion charms stopped doing anything a while ago,” Tom shifts, trying to get more comfortable between Ron’s elbows and the bars of Death Star’s cage. “Star, would you _please_ shut up? As soon as we get on that train, we’re allowed to do magic again. I’m not above cursing insubordinate owls.”

“Merlin’s boogers, I think that actually _worked_ ,” says Fred in awe, as Death Star finally ceases her screeching. “I think I like you, Riddle.”

And then Arthur lands the car in London, and Tom stops paying attention to anything that isn’t the city. All the buildings are grand, enormous, sparkling with glass. If he hadn’t been told where they are, he might never have guessed that this was his city, the place he had left blown half to pieces, shattered by the war. “It’s so clean,” his mouth spits out.

Harry, the only one to hear, gives him a funny look. “No it isn’t.”

“It’s not been firebombed, and there isn’t shit on the street.”

He blinks. “Oh. I’d forgotten you lived here during the war.”

“Hmph.”

Harry shuts up and lets Tom have his moment to soak up the wonder of the modern buildings, picking apart what he recognizes out from under the new development. He’d thought, from hanging around other magicals, that he hadn’t missed all that much over the last couple of decades – just some social reforms by Minister Dumbledore and a bit of experimentation with Muggle projectors. But the Muggle world – he can hardly wrap his mind around the changes he sees here. _Hermione will know the answers to some of my questions_ , he thinks. He’ll find her on the train.

King’s Cross is more crowded than ever, people in strange fashions rushing here and there. Tom clutches his trunk close and hopes his hair doesn’t look awful. Ron had complimented him on it earlier – he’d been telling the truth, too – and Tom likes the look of it in the mirror. But _really_ , giving Harry an old pair of scissors and letting him go at it had not been one of his brighter ideas.

The herd of children and parents presses forwards through the Muggle mob, and Tom lets himself be dragged along in the center of the pack as they locate Platform 9¾.

“Subtlety!” Molly reminds them, groaning as the twins rocket off through the barrier.

The rest of them go in smaller groups, feigning conversations. “So, er, Slytherin, huh?” says the littlest Weasley – Ginny, he remembers – as they cross into 9¾ together. “Nice. Me too.”

“I trust we’ll be seeing more of each other, then,” Tom says, offering her a firm handshake and a warm smile. He doesn’t need to read her mind to know that she’s just about swooning already. _Excellent_. Soon he will have this new batch of Slytherins eating out of his hand like a flock of tame doves.

Henry waves to him through the wizarding crowd. Tom slips after him and finds Draco, Hermione, Harry, Ron, and Neville standing together. Henry sticks his hands in his pockets. “Let’s meet back here and find a carriage in a few minutes, yeah? I’m going to go say ‘bye to my parents.”

Tom and Harry, pulled along like flotsam in Henry’s wake, suffer hugs from Lily, James, and even sticky-fingered little Dahlia. “Behave,” she whispers sternly in Tom’s ear. He gives her an awkward pat on the back and makes some excuse to drag Harry and Death Star back towards the train. The owl starts squawking again, adding to the cacophony of other upset animals.

Draco and Hermione wait by the meeting place, evidently arguing about some Charms technique. An enormous cat winds around Hermione’s feet, gazing balefully at something in that Neville Longbottom boy’s hands – a toad, Tom realizes.

“Heya, Crookshanks!” Harry leans down to speak to the cat. The creature eyes him doubtfully, but in a moment Harry has it rolling about on the dirty cobblestones and asking for more pets.

“That’s funny,” says Hermione, “I hadn’t thought I’d introduced you two yet. He doesn’t normally warm up to new people this quickly.”

“Er, Henry told me all about Crookshanks here.” Harry is a very bad liar. Hermione looks like she’s about to call him out about it when Henry returns to them, and she gets distracted by dragging him into their wand movements debate.

A minute later, Ron joins them, and they set off to find an empty compartment.

They assemble in what looks like a well-practiced seating formation: Hermione and Draco sat in the window seats, Draco next to Henry, and the Gryffindors between them and the corridor. Ron sits next to Hermione, taking up nearly two seats with his long legs.

Tom sucks on his teeth and inserts himself next to Neville and his toad. Harry settles in next to Ron, Death Star’s cage on his lap.

The others launch into a routine of pooling pocket money and deliberating what they should buy from the trolley.

“We should spend it all on Bertie Bott’s. You know what a nightmare it is to get those things direct shipped out to Hogwarts! They’re pretty much a kind of currency in Gryffindor at this point, we could get loads of favors.”

“Careful, Ronald, you’re starting to sound like one of your brothers,” Draco snickers.

“Who, George? He’s a genius, that doesn’t work as an insult.”

Tom leans against the wall and drapes himself in regal boredom. He would personally prefer chocolate frogs, but he also has no interest in getting dragged into their petty squabbles.

Electric excitement dances through him – he’ll be home soon. It’s funny how easy it had been, this summer, to let his grand plans rest, but here, on the Hogwarts Express – he can feel it shuddering to life beneath their feet – he’s shedding like a snake, emerging again as Tom Riddle, the boy who will reshape the Wizarding World in his own image.

As the train departs the station in a cloud of coal smoke and a flutter of waving hands, and as London wears away into the English countryside, Tom shakes off the sleepy sunlight of this idyllic summer.

He never does figure out what the others order from the trolley; before they’re even an hour into the journey, someone raps on the door to their compartment. Tom, the closest to the door, nearly rises to open it, but remembers himself and does it with magic. It feels good to do that outside the privacy of the birchwood or his and Harry’s room.

A witch with strawberry blond hair and a wide forehead steps inside, smiling sunnily. “Oh, hi, Hermione! I heard Tom Riddle and Harry Partridge were sitting in this compartment. I’ve got to go to the prefect meeting in a moment, but I wondered if they might like to meet some of their Slytherin year mates.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Tom stands, rising. “Tom Riddle. It’s a pleasure to meet your acquaintance.”

The girl, over a head shorter than him, cocks her head to the side. Tom meets her eyes and sees part of himself reflected in her: in one another, they each see what could either be a dangerous opponent or a valuable ally. “Susan Bones,” she shakes his hand. “I can’t _wait_ to get to know you, Riddle.”

It’s a threat, not a flirtation. Tom _likes_ this girl.

Harry gets to his feet. Susan grins. “Partridge, I assume? Pansy’s cousin? She’s been very excited to meet you. Follow me, now.”

“Er, bye, then,” Harry says to the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors on his way out.

Tom hears Neville say, “wait, there’s a prefect meeting?”

The fifth year Slytherins are seated further up the train. Susan deposits them there with little fanfare, saying, “here you are, everyone. Make nice,” before collecting a boy with hooded eyes and dark hair, and going to attend to her prefect duties.

Two girls and a boy are left in the carriage. Tom samples their thoughts and feels instantly at ease: each of them is trying to figure out where he and Harry will fall in their hierarchy. Tom smiles broadly, drawing himself up, and feels with satisfaction the shift in their thoughts, the recognition of Tom as _powerful_ and _handsome_ and _to be respected(?)_. God, but he’s missed hanging around Slytherins.

“Tom Riddle, I presume?” asks the pretty girl with electric blue eyes. “And the one with the Parkinson nose must be Harry Partridge.”

“Precisely,” Tom says, assessing the girl. Her curly black hair and delicate eyebrows remind him of Orion. “And you are?”

“Lyra Black,” she says, confirming his suspicions.

“Come sit by me, Harry,” the girl with an upturned nose matching Harry’s glamour gestures to the seat beside her, shoving the boy out of the way. “Pansy Parkinson, by the way.”

Harry sits between Pansy and the boy, face impassive. Not for the first time, Tom longs to see into his thoughts. He sits by Lyra, who giggles. _Flirtation as a default_ , he notes. She’s attracted to him – all three of them are, the hair seems to be a hit – but not actually interested.

The boy across from Tom uncrosses his legs. “Michael Corner,” he says shortly, sending a hummingbird-quick smile at Harry. “It’ll be good to have you two. We’ve only had four boys in our year up till now.”

Pansy makes as if to elbow him, then remembers Harry is in the way and that elbowing people is unladylike anyway. Oh dear – yeah, that’s a crush. Tom looks away so he doesn’t have to deal with any more second-hand feelings. “Michael’s just saying that. He’s loved having a room all to himself.”

Harry frowns. “When I was at Hogwarts, my House only had three girls. I thought four people was kind of just average per gender per year.”

“It must have been the war…” says Lyra. “I didn’t realize it hurt us in Britain quite that badly, but normally each year has forty-nine students, so six students per gender per year. When there are gaps, it’s kind of just assumed that they’re for students who were meant to attend Hogwarts in that year, but died or never existed or – well, or were bound to slip through time and end up with us.” She shrugs. “It’s good to have the mystery of the empty slots in Slytherin solved, though. Eliza had us all convinced for years that she had met a pair of twin boys on the train first year, then never saw them again, and they must have drowned in the lake and gotten _eaten by the squid_.”

Michael snickers. “What, you believed that story? Lyra, there is no way you’re that gullible.”

“I just liked the idea of the squid eating people, that’s all. It always struck me as incredibly boring, how calm it is all the time.”

“In my fourth year, a kid fell in the lake and the squid rescued him,” says Harry helpfully. “It really is quite friendly.”

“Shame,” Lyra sighs heavily, turning out the window. A herd of sheep flies by, and Tom thinks he might see a slice of ocean in the distance.

Pansy huffs and leans forward. “So, which classes are you two taking this year?”

Tom, thankful for the change in topic from the squid’s nonexistent taste for human flesh, answers eagerly, and soon enough they’re all swapping stories about disastrous lesson plans. Tom recounts a tale of the time Dumbledore had set the Slytherins to transfiguring plant pots into swarms of bees. What was intended as a lesson on turning one simple object into many complex objects had turned into a desperate hunt around the school for a pot-turned-enormous stinging beetle.

He sits back, basking in Lyra’s, Michael’s, and Pansy’s resulting admiration. He has proved himself witty, established a connection to the Minister, and given them a taste for his personal Transfiguration skill all in one. Once classes begin and he can properly display his power, they will fall nicely into line. Susan might present an obstacle, but Tom is confident that given the right leverage, he will either recruit or ostracize her within the year.

When Susan and the other prefect return from their duties, they find their three friends laughing at one of Tom’s jokes, Tom himself smiling in restrained amusement, and Harry looking stony. Tom isn’t sure what to make of that – but he has more important things to attend to at the moment.

“I don’t believe we were properly introduced before,” says the boy prefect with the hooded eyes and lopsided smile. “I’m Calcifer Lestrange. I look forward to sharing a dorm with one of you.”

“Lestrange,” Harry’s eyes narrow.

The crooked smile slips off Calcifer’s face. “Yes, _that_ Lestrange. Don’t worry, I haven’t snapped yet. I’ve at least a couple of years before they put me out to pasture like they did mother dear.”

Calcifer sits next to Tom. A moment of eye contact gives him the image of a woman with Calcifer’s dark, hooded eyes, wild with madness. “It’s nice to meet you,” Tom says firmly, shaking Calcifer’s warm hand.

“Likewise, Tom Riddle. You seem like the good sort.”

Across the compartment, Harry rolls his eyes in a way he probably thinks is subtle. From his lap, Death Star tilts her head crazily at Tom, yellow eyes bulging.

***

Harry stutters to a halt before they can climb into the thestral-drawn carriages en-route to the castle. “Um, we did _not_ have those things in my – in the forties.”

“They’re thestrals,” says Calcifer Lestrange, clambering into the carriage. “I’ll bet you did have them, you just couldn’t see them. Most people can’t.”

Tom, who has been able to see the beasts since first year, gently pushes Harry into the carriage ahead of him. “They’re completely harmless. If you’ve seen death, you can see them.”

“Who did you watch die?” asks Lyra, the blue of her eyes luminous in the moonlight. “I’ve always kind of wished I could see them.”

“Lyra, you’re overstepping,” Michael looks up from the book he’s reading by wandlight. “They came from a time of terrible strife. I’m sure they’ve had plenty of opportunities to see the worst in humanity.” His eyes flick to Harry, measuring.

The ride to the castle is quiet. The rain from earlier in the day has subsided to a sky streaked at intervals with clouds and stars. Tom leans against the window and watches the thestrals splashing through puddles on the unpaved road. They pass out of Hogsmeade proper and into the Dark Forest, and Tom feels the song of the Hogwarts oaks pounding in his bones, reminding him that no matter what time he finds himself in, this place will always be his home.

***

The Great Hall is absolutely packed with delighted students. Ghosts soar overhead, chatting, and the enchanted ceiling reflects the waxing moon as it passes in and out from behind clouds.

The other fifth years lead them to a spot near the middle of Slytherin table, where a girl with deep chestnut brown hair waits for them. There’s something strange about her face – the way the light hits her, it looks almost as though there are no whites to her eyes.

Then the girl sees Susan, and stands up, and then keeps standing up, until she’s towering over everyone else in the hall. Tom’s mind pinwheels, uncomprehending – this girl isn’t part giant, like Tom’s friend Rubeus. She’s slim, all whipcord muscle, and her torso seems of a normal size, she just –

The girl kneels to embrace Susan, and Tom sees the rest of her. A centaur, of course. He’d never imagined one of them might deign to visit the Great Hall.

“Peryle,” Susan says, “these are Tom Riddle and Harry Partridge, the time travelers. I think they’ll do well with us.”

“So it _is_ you,” Peryle returns to her full height, leaving a protective hand on Susan’s shoulder. “My family will, I think, be very interested in the two of you.” She glances at the sky, but only for a moment. “Welcome back to Hogwarts.”

“I apologize for my ignorance,” Tom finds himself sitting between Peryle and Calcifer. “But fifty years ago, it would have been unheard of for centaurs to come to Hogwarts to learn.”

Peryle blinks eyelashes as long and straight as a horse’s. “All who bear wands are welcome at Hogwarts, if the school deems them sufficiently powerful.” Tom remembers the Potters’ history books, detailing a long legal battle for wand rights by the goblins.

“I didn’t realize the centaurs had also won wand rights.”

“The legislation that followed the goblin’s campaigning just says that anyone with magic, if chosen by a wand, has the right to wield that wand. It’s just rare that a centaur be chosen, and then for one of us to also get an invitation to Hogwarts. The castle favors humans.”

Her mind is impenetrable. “I would not be so sure,” Tom says under the roar of the Hall around them. “She was built to serve the people of the forest. Not all wizards have forgotten our legacy.”

Peryle’s eyes widen. Before she can respond, silence ripples across the crowd, emanating from the head table. In Dippet’s place stands a stern woman in emerald green. “Welcome back to Hogwarts, everyone. Before our feast for tonight is served, I would like to take the opportunity to introduce you all to the newest member of our faculty.”

At her gesture, Remus Lupin stands with a terse little wave. “Professor Lupin will be teaching Transfiguration from now on. Please join us in welcoming him to the staff.”

The student body offers up some muted applause. Tom cranes his neck at the head table, spotting tiny Flitwick and old Slughorn. Severus Snape sits next to Lupin.

“Thank you for your attention,” says the Headmistress, clapping twice. Conversations spark back up as the food finally appears. Tom heaps carrots and pasta onto his plate and engages Pansy Parkinson in a lively debate over the practicality of taking Care of Magical Creatures, trying to ignore Peryle staring at him all through dinner.

The trek back to the dungeons feels like a homecoming, with the warmth of dinner sitting in his stomach and most of Susan’s posse circling him, planets pulled into his orbit. Tom’s captivated Pansy, Lyra, and Calcifer quite thoroughly – he can taste the foundations of an enduring admiration building in their minds. He savors it, this feeling of manipulating hierarchies around himself; he’d lost that this summer. The Potters were all too busy being individually brilliant and supporting each other’s brilliance in turn to really bother with the power plays and one-upmanship he’s become accustomed to.

But these three Slytherins are like mirrors. Tom looks into their eyes and sees himself reflected back: tall, handsome, charming, mysterious, brilliant. Once classes start and he can display his magical power, too, they’ll be caught. He can tell Michael is similarly entranced, but he’s hanging back with his book, withholding judgement until he can see a truer demonstration of Tom’s potential.

“Welcome home,” Susan says, opening the way to the common room. Tom sweeps through the entranceway, and the furniture layout has changed, but everything else – the high arched ceiling, the wall encompassed by a view into the lake, the little lowered area by the fireplace – it’s all the same. _Home_. Yes.

“Susan! Good, I’ve been wanting to speak with you,” says a voice from down by the fireplace, sitting in the nicest armchair. Tom feels the old covetous spark leaping in him as he recognizes George Weasley’s orange hair and elegant sprawl.

Susan waves prettily at George. “Be right there, Weasley! Peri, will you show Harry and Tom the dorms?”

“Follow me, you two,” says Peryle, striding off towards where Tom well _knows_ the dorms are, thank you very much. Her back half is the same brown as her hair, dappled with white. He is pleased to note that the entire remainder of the group follows Tom and Peryle, despite probably having allies from other years to reconnect with after the summer.

Tom strides dutifully after Peryle into the dorm corridor, which is just as it had been in his time: numbers mounted on closed doors, the same plush green runner. The fifth years’ dorm is two doors down the hall on the right.

“Boys’ rooms on the left, girls’ rooms on the right. Two of you to a room. The fourth door down is the bathroom, and right in front of us is our year’s private common space. Susan will probably call a meeting in there when she comes back. In the meantime, feel free to make yourselves at home.”

“Right,” says Michael. “How do we want to divvy up rooms? Calcifer and I have each gotten rooms to ourselves for these past four years,” he explains to Harry, who has been very quiet.

“I’ll take Riddle,” Calcifer says lazily. Michael, scowling, relents. Tom tweaks his mental map of the years’ power dynamics.

“Alright, then, Harry, I’ll show you the room.”

“We’re the third door down, closest to the bathroom,” Calcifer tells Tom, gesturing him forward. The room is of the same dimensions as Tom’s old Slytherin dorm: big enough for two beds, their trunks, and a little window to the lake. His trunk sits at the foot of a bed, waiting for him.

Tom catches Calcifer’s eye, searching in the other boy’s mind for the perfect thing to say –

“You’re a Legilimens, aren’t you?”

Tom stiffens. “How –”

“I was raised by the Black family. They teach Occlumency to all their children. Turns out I can’t do it well enough to shield my thoughts, but I certainly know enough to tell when someone’s blundering around my mind.”

“I’ve been told I have a subtle touch,” Tom protests.

“Not compared to Lyra’s dad, you don’t.”

“Lyra’s not an Occlumens, is she? I could have sworn –”

“She’s the best bloody Occlumens in our generation of Black cousins. She was probably fabricating thoughts for you to fixate on so that you would ignore the fact that she was actually mostly hidden from you.”

Tom pinches the bridge of his nose. It appears Lyra has more in common with Orion than just her looks. “I don’t suppose anyone else in our year has Occlumency training?”

Calcifer hesitates. “Greengrass, maybe. That’s it.”

“I see,” Tom sits on his bed, staring at Calcifer over steepled fingers.

“Look, Tom, you’ve seen inside my head. You know where I stand on you. I think it would be reasonable to guess that you’re a very powerful wizard, and you have charisma in spades.”

Tom watches him hungrily, waiting.

“Look – Susan’s my friend. I’m not going to ditch her for the first moderately competent wizard I meet. And our class has gone through enough civil wars after the mess of last year. But for now… for now, you can trust me, and at some point in the future I might be open to a closer alliance.”

“And what, Calcifer Lestrange, might you bring to the table in an alliance with me?”

Calcifer laughs, reminding Tom of Geoffrey’s Uncle Sirius. “Magical power runs as strongly in my family as madness does. My mind might be doomed to fracture by the time I hit my twenties, but until then…” he shrugs. “Plus, Lyra goes where I do. My loyalty means the allegiance of the sole heir to the Noble House of Black. There’s a reason Susan came out on top last year, and to be frank it had less to do with her leadership and more to do with my deciding I was fed up with Daphne’s arrogance.”

Tom smiles, long and slow, just to watch him shiver. “Compelling indeed, Mister Lestrange. I think you’ll find I have much to offer in return.”

Someone raps on their door. “Meeting in the private common,” says Susan’s voice.

“Lead the way,” Tom tells Calcifer, and follows him to the little room at the end of the corridor, which is fixed with another floor-to-ceiling lakeview window like in the proper common room. Half their year is already there, arrayed around Susan in order of their prominence.

Susan holds court in the large green armchair closest to the window, just as Tom had in his own years’ common space, five decades past. Peryle lays at her right hand, where all the throw pillows from the other furniture have been placed down for her. On Susan’s left, Pansy and Lyra sit curled around the Dark Studies book, talking quietly.

A girl with pale hair and perfect posture watches them from a gray couch shoved against the plain stone wall to the right. Tom remembers Calcifer’s comment about a ‘civil war.’

Calcifer settles down onto the sofa next to the girls, leaving Tom to select an armchair placed near the doorway. He’d figured out by his third year that these little Slytherin common spaces possess a strange magic. The furniture in them changes according to the fluctuating power struggles of the year they belong to. He can see three ‘factions’ present in the room: Susan’s group, all seated on dark green furniture – or pillows, in Peryle’s case; the icy girl’s four-seater gray couch, off to the side; and two pale green armchairs, one of them Tom’s. Funny, that; the furniture for his people had always been black in the past.

More new students filter in: a girl with deep brown skin; a sullen, bony boy; and a freckled boy with dancing hazel eyes. All three sit on the blonde girl’s couch. Soon after, Harry and Michael finally arrive. Michael settles between Pansy and Calcifer, and Harry, after a moment’s assessment, lowers himself into the second mint-colored armchair flanking the doorway. He meets Tom’s eyes for a flickering moment, just long enough for Tom to catch the barest snap of stale hatred in his eyes.

“Gryffindor doesn’t have little common spaces like this,” Harry comments idly.

“None of the other Houses do,” says Michael. “Of course, _we_ don’t get actual windows, so it all evens out in the end.”

“Everyone’s here,” says Susan, reining them all in. “First things first: we finally have a full year of students. Tom, Harry, you’ve met all of this lot. Over there are Greengrass, Dearborn, Nott, and Finch-Fletchley. Welcome to Slytherin House.

“Now, down to business: George and I just had a talk. You all know what a monster he is, but like it or not he’s in charge this year, and he wants the Cup. He seems completely dead-set on knocking his twin down a peg – Ravenclaw has been dominating for far too long. Now that we’re upper years, it falls on us to accomplish that.”

Tom leans back, crossing his legs. They must have waged a bloody civil war indeed for Susan not to have even bothered properly introducing her apparent rivals. _Greengrass_ , he thinks. _Dearborn, Nott, Finch-Fletchley_. Will it be better to erode Susan’s supports, or strengthen her opponents? How long has this schism existed? Perhaps he can try both tactics at once.

“Our year, as ever, serves as the primary resistance to the Ravenclaw’s Triangle of Death.”

Tom blinks. Harry snickers.

Susan smiles grimly, her pale face washed green against the dark of the nighttime lake outside the window. “The Triangle of Death is what we call Granger, Malfoy, and the elder Potter. Those three win more points for Ravenclaw than the rest of their year combined, between answering questions in class and the Quidditch pitch. You two lived with the Potters this summer, right? We’ll need everything you have on them if we’re going to win George his House Cup.”

“The ‘Triangle of Death’? Really?” Harry says, grinning.

“It’s melodramatic, sure,” says Pansy. “But you haven’t had a class with them yet. It fits.”

Susan nods. “Harry, I heard you’re a Quidditch prodigy. Our current Seeker is just okay. Our team makes everyone try out anew every year to make sure we have the most talented possible players on the field. You’re going to try out.”

“Er, yes, ma’am.”

“Tom, I understand you’re a capable student? Show off. Charm the professors. Do everything you can to win points before the Triangle can pounce.”

“Of course,” Tom says smoothly, already plotting – his first order of business should be to feel out Susan’s primary rival, the Greengrass girl. Then he’ll squeeze information about whatever had gone down last year from Calcifer. Then – he’ll figure out what’s going on with Harry, slumped sullenly in his armchair, hair wild and glasses askew. Even wearing his glamour, he looks every inch his father’s son. Tom feels a strange ache in his chest, a memory of sunshine…

“Dismissed,” Susan says, and Tom gets to his feet, stretching a bit ostentatiously and noting whose eyes follow the gesture.

“Tom Riddle,” Peryle says, black eyes level. “I would speak to you.”

Susan and the others depart. Harry leaves without a sideways glance at Tom.

“I will be leaving again for the Forest tonight,” says Peryle. “I am permitted to come and go, insofar as the adults do not seem to know how to impose rules on me. My family needs to hear about your return to us. And about Harry Partridge.”

“Did the stars foretell what was going to happen to me? Filobrix used to say they seemed particularly loud in my presence… he’d never tell me what they said about me, though.”

“You can ask him yourself,” Peryle says, clambering to her enormous height. “Come to us tomorrow, in the morning. Bring Harry Partridge.”

“Will you fetch me?”

She laughs, light and refined, a cousin to Susan’s bright giggle. “If half the stories I have heard about you are true, Tom Riddle, you will not need a navigator in the Forest.”

The low doorway to the little sitting room stretches up to accommodate Peryle as she trots away from the dorms. Tom lingers for a long time, staring at Susan’s big chair, silhouetted against the inky abyss of the window.

***

Harry is woken the next morning by a sharp, familiar knock on the door. He flails for a moment, disoriented – he’s cold, and his blankets are softer and heavier than usual, and the light in the room is all wrong.

Oh. Slytherin. He remembers now. Bloody excellent. Even the stone of the ceiling seems to mock him. He misses the solid wood of the Gryffindor ceilings.

The knock comes again. Michael, invisible save for a bit of long black hair sticking out from under his blanket, mumbles in protest. Harry hauls himself over to the door, finding a perfectly presentable Tom waiting for him.

“Were you sleeping? I didn’t think you were capable of having a lie-in.”

Harry rubs his eyes, scowling. “I normally get woken by the sun, and we’re under the bloody lake. Forgive me if my internal clock is a little off.”

Even Tom’s fond smile is a whole lot icier than it had been over the summer. Harry swallows his hurt at the sight of it, but the side of Tom he’d seen yesterday – he’d thought he could sustain a sort of strange friendship with Riddle, but he can’t look at him right now without seeing the boy in the diary.

“Thanks for waking me up,” Harry says shortly. “I’d better get ready for classes.”

Tom frowns. “Harry – it’s Saturday. We don’t have class for two more days.”

“That’s – er, why didn’t they wait to ship us out here until tomorrow, then?”

“I think the Hogwarts Express works by a pretty fixed schedule… days of the week don’t really register as important to a magical artifact that’s been carrying students to school on the first of September for the last couple of centuries.”

Harry frowns.

“Listen, Peryle told me the centaurs want to speak to us. Will you come out to the Dark Forest with me after breakfast?”

“You woke me up so that I could come with you into the _Forbidden Forest_ to _socialize with the murderous herd of centaurs_?”

“I was under the impression that you enjoy that sort of thing.”

And there he is, the second Tom, whose laugh echoed through the birch wood, who loves _Star Wars_ and gives Geoffrey terrible tips on romancing Ginny Weasley. “I’ll do it,” Harry says, “obviously. You maniac.”

He dresses quickly, and leaves Michael sleeping. Tom waits for him in the near-deserted common room, where two anxious-looking seventh years are scribbling out last-minute summer assignments in front of the fire.

Breakfast is similarly sparse with students. People seem to be taking full advantage of the two extra nights of rest before they have to subject themselves to classes. Harry helps himself to a large plate of pancakes. “No plotting,” he says to Tom, who is making his thinking face at the poor fruit platter.

“As if you could stop me.”

The walk to the Forest is kind of lovely, with the sun peeking over the eastern mountains and the nighttime chill of the air melting away. By habit, Harry searches out Hagrid’s hut by the edge of the Forest, but it’s not there; without Tom Riddle lurking around Hogwarts, ready to stab Hagrid in the back, he must have graduated Hogwarts and gone on to – well, do whatever one does to become qualified enough to write the Care of Magical Creatures textbook.

“You’re quiet this morning,” says Tom, eyes distant and hungry as they cross the threshold into the Forest. This wood is denser by far than the Potters’ birch wood. Harry breathes in the musty air, feeling some deep part of him come awake. Tom had taught him to listen for the music of ancient oak trees, and he hears them now; a different song than the grove within the birch grove. Stronger, older.

“It’s just hard for me sometimes to remember all the _things_ that you are, Tom Riddle,” Harry says, finding himself speaking in rhythm with the distant melody of the oaks.

“All the things I am…? Even I don’t know that, Harry.”

Harry steps over a fallen branch and taps his fingers against the handle of his wand.

“The Hat said something strange to me. It said that when it first Sorted me, it did it based on my family’s House allegiance.”

Steps faltering, Harry says, “and all you know of your lineage is your name, which I’m sure you’ve fully researched to no avail.”

“I thought, before I even knew what I could do was _magic_ , that my father was like me. A wizard, a demon, whatever. But ‘Riddle’ isn’t a magical name, and I don’t have the pureblood look.”

“What, the chin thing? Or the watermelon allergy?”

“Either!” Tom laughs, head thrown back, unrestrained in the patchy light of the woods. “Good gracious, the fights I would get in with Druella about the _chin thing_. And the watermelon. I like watermelon, but they never serve it in the Great Hall – I asked the elves why not, and they said that they couldn’t possibly risk all the most inbred kids breaking out in hives – I mean, they didn’t put it like that, but _really_. My entire inner circle was allergic. It’s ludicrous.”

“I didn’t realize you were so passionate about… watermelon,” Harry says, feeling the pressure in his chest return. “But yeah, I think all the purebloods I know have really prominent chins. You’re too… cheeky.”

“Cheeky?”

“Cheek-boney. Y’know.”

Tom huffs. “The _point_ is, I was thinking, and I realized none of your family have those traits, either.”

“We’re half-bloods, though. And I’m pretty sure James has the watermelon thing.”

“Fine then, take James as our case study. He doesn’t have any of the facial structures one would expect of a British pureblood.”

“Yeah, ‘cause he’s got the ‘facial structures’ of British _and_ Indian and Egyptian and – fuck, whatever else, I learned my ancestry from Sirius and he didn’t really know what he was talking about anyway.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Tom says. “So maybe the – ah – _cheek-boniness_ came from a group of _foreign_ inbred maniacs.”

Harry squints. “Tom, I hate to break it to you, but you’re white. Like, really white.”

“So maybe one of my parents was French or something. Oh, turn left up here, Harry, we don’t want to go into the deep woods today.”

Harry tears his feet away from the direction of the oaks, hoping Tom will drop the subject.

No luck. “So –”

“Tom, tell me more about that trick you do with the pigment. It seems like it would be Light, right, but you seem to have no trouble performing it.”

“That’s actually an interesting case! See –” Tom suddenly stops in the path, a dangerous gleam in his eyes. “Oh my _God_. You _know_. Harry, you absolute –” The leaves scattered at his feet shift into twisted, red-eyed birds that take off with a squawk as Tom paces through them to get to Harry.

It’s strange, how easily Tom can go from joking to murderous. His voice goes up several octaves when he’s angry, which would probably be funny on anyone else – but it just reminds Harry of a turban falling away to reveal madness, last year’s endless nightmares of a monster in the shell of an infant. Harry had always thought that Voldemort’s wild swings in mood were some consequence of his madness, but that’s just how Tom is.

The un-birds circle overhead. Harry kicks away a tree root twining around his foot. “Calm the fuck down, Riddle. You know the unspeak-seal wouldn’t have let me say anything,” _even if I did want to_.

“You know who I am,” less high now, but hoarse, words still inked in violence.

“I don’t know who you are, Tom. I don’t even know who your parents were, not really.” And part of Harry itches for a fight, some answer to the magic crackling in the air between them, but the rest of him… “You’re a half-blood,” he tries, feeling the weight of the brand on his neck.

“ _I knew it_ ,” Tom says, slipping into Parseltongue in his excitement.

“ _Are you calm_?” Harry hisses back, then catches himself. “I’ll try to tell you what it’ll let me, but I honestly don’t know that much about your ancestry.”

“Very calm,” Tom says, vanishing the un-birds in a manic little gesture.

“Er, sure you are. All I know is that your father was a Muggle and your mother was –” he grimaces and spits, gritting his teeth against the burn of the brand. He wasn’t even going to say anything about Slytherin.

“How strange,” Tom says, and as suddenly as he’d snapped into rage he’s pacified into a thoughtful haze. “I always thought a witch wouldn’t have let herself die in childbirth…”

“She gave up her life so her son could go on,” Harry says softly. “There’s a nobility to that, don’t you think? There are some things magic can’t do, some wounds that can’t be patched with a spell.”

“Sometime I wonder if I’ll ever know all the _things_ that you are, Harry Potter,” Tom echoes, giving him a look that could mean anything.

It’s then that the centaurs find them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote a oneshot featuring flower symbolism, a darker Tom, and Harry as a malevolent ghost. If that sounds interesting, have a click [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23496772) and check it out! I'm really proud of it. 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading.  
> 🦘<3


	8. Child of Prophecy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom meet the mysterious Mother, play an arcade game, and attend their first classes.

“Tom Riddle?” says the centaur at the forefront, his hair the black of the woods at night. “So it is true. Hello, old friend.”

“Filobrix?” Tom steps forward. “I’m surprised you remember me.”

“Of course I remember you, Tom. If you knew half the things…” his head tilts up to gaze at the sky. Harry has forgotten how frustrating it was to deal with centaurs. “Your disappearance all those decades ago wasn’t meant to be. The skies shifted overnight. Now… they’re shifting again.”

The grizzled centaur – Filobrix – gestures for them to follow him. The rest of the centaurs fall in around them. Harry finds Peryle, the Slytherin, trotting in step beside him; she is not the only one of the centaurs to carry a wand.

They hike up a hill and emerge in a spot of forest clear of branches and undergrowth. Here, structures of wood, stone, and dirt protrude from the ground, some letting smoke out of their chimneys. The centaur settlement – that’s what it is, Harry is nearly certain – bucks all notions of human aesthetics. It appears as though parts of the forest had just decided to be this shape, rather than being built in this way.

Members of the herd stare after them with mixed distrust and fascination. Harry keeps his head high, scanning for a sign of Firenze.

“Tell the Mother I’ve brought the humans,” Filobrix says to a younger centaur.

Peryle conjures them a pair of stools so they can sit around a cold firepit, the party that had come to get them from the forest settling down around them. “Did you get lost, Riddle?” she says. “We sensed a disturbance that my grandfather recognized as your doing.”

Tom glares at Harry, but without any real heat. “Not lost, just distracted.”

“More like distressed,” Harry snorts.

“That, too,” Tom says with a careless shrug.

“My grandfather would have sought any excuse to come fetch you, anyway, so we are not complaining.”

“Your grandfather…” Tom frowns. “Not Filobrix?” She nods, and he laughs, incredulous. “It’s so strange. I keep meeting the grandchildren of people I used to know.”

Harry bites down a snort. Tom has no idea. Nothing could be as strange as alternate selves of Harry’s old classmates running around – not to mention the once-unborn children of Death Eaters and their victims.

Peryle hisses suddenly. “The Mother’s coming, Riddle. Partridge, do try to be courteous.”

All the centaurs bow in unison to someone behind Harry. He stands and turns, seeing a woman, impossibly taller than the other centaurs, beautiful and nude and utterly unsexual. There is no color to her in the same way there is no color to the sun, like she might have once held pigment but it bled out of her, evaporating in her luminosity. Her eyes, flat and milky white, fix on him, and he swings into a belated bow.

The enormous blind centaur sniffs the air, smiling slowly. “It has been a long time since our paths have crossed, oak-speaker. You seem to have kept well over that interval.”

Apparently she’s talking to Tom, because he bows even lower. “Mother, to me it seems like just three months since we last talked. Though I know it has in truth been far longer, your radiance is unchanged.”

He stands out of his bow, which Harry takes as a cue to do the same. He takes another look at the Mother – if Tom knows her, she must be well over sixty – but other than the blindness there’s no sign of age to her unlined human face.

“I _have_ always liked you, little boy. Who is your new friend? He has the stink of prophecy to him.”

Tom locks eyes with Harry, mouthing ‘ _prophecy?_ ’. Harry shrugs, frowning.

“While you are in my presence, child of prophecy, I would thank you not to bother with cheap deceptions.”

Harry feels his heart gasp into the rhythm of fear, feeling the power behind that voice tremble in the air. “Mother,” he says, emulating Tom. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know of any prophecy – I’m not trying to deceive you.”

“Hush,” Tom says, surprisingly gentle. “She just means this,” and he lifts the disguise pendant out from under Harry’s t-shirt. The hairs on the back of his neck all stand on end at the brush of Tom’s scarred hand against his ear.

“That’s better. What is your name, little one?”

“He is the second one we told you about, Mother,” says Filobrix respectfully. “Harry Partridge, the other time traveler.”

“Cheap deceptions again, I think.”

“My name is Harry Po –” the unspeak-seal burns, and Harry tastes iron and ash.

“His name is Harry Potter,” Tom says for him. “He’s… not from the same place as me.”

The Mother makes a sound, then, like an aspen being struck by lightning, a sort of popping scream that echoes for a moment after she’s shut her white lips. Only after it’s over does it occur to Harry that it must have been a laugh. “Oh, yes, now I see… Peryle, lovely, thank you for bringing them. Do bring Tom to go see the unicorns, won’t you? They’ve been pining terribly for him.”

“Yes, Mother,” says Peryle, and they all bow again, and Peryle makes for the east, herding Harry and Tom with her. Harry looks over his shoulder, but the Mother is gone, leaving just the strangely beautiful centaur dwellings and the smoke of cookfires.

“You won’t tell anyone who I am, will you?” Harry asks eventually, as they reach a swiftly flowing river.

Peryle glares down at him. “That would require me _knowing_ who you are, green-eyes.”

Tom, apparently remembering what he’s holding, hands Harry back his disguise pendant.

“I’m not going to tell you who I am.”

“Then I cannot tell anyone who you are, either. _Partridge_.”

Harry puts the enchanted necklace back on. “Are we actually going to go see the unicorns?”

“You two ought to,” Peryle says. “The Mother was not exaggerating about how much they missed you, Riddle.”

“Stupid horny goats,” Tom says fondly. _What the fuck_ , Harry thinks for the millionth time in the past two months.

“I’m going to return to the castle. You two really don’t need an escort, not if one of you really is an oak-speaker.”

“Maybe two of us,” Tom says with a speculative look that makes Harry shift in place.

“I will leave you to your magic goats,” Peryle says solemnly. Harry is starting to think that she’s not actually serious about anything she says, just caught in a constant deadpan snark, but she’s cantering away into the darkness of the trees before he can get a good look at her expression.

“We’re actually going to go see the unicorns,” Harry repeats, sighing as he watches Tom weave two young trees on opposite sides of the riverbank into a remarkably sturdy-looking bridge. “Also, Tom, what on earth just happened? Like, seriously, what?”

Tom puts a foot on his tree bridge, testing its strength, and makes a pleased sound. “What part are you weirded out about? I’m a bit caught up on the whole ‘child of prophecy’ thing, myself.”

“How about the _giant albino centaur_ who you’re apparently friends with? Is that weird enough for you?”

They set off over the river. “Oh, yeah. I suppose that might qualify as weird.” They make it to the opposite bank and Tom unravels his bridge, leaving the trees to return to business as usual. “Look at it like this: all cultures have their own stories for where magic comes from, right?”

“I guess.”

“Like maybe it was a gift from the ocean gods, or it was stolen from the stars. In Britain, it’s always been said that magic was given to us by the forests, so we could protect ourselves from Muggles.”

“If we didn’t have magic yet, what was the difference between us and Muggles?”

“Hush, Harry, don’t question the story.”

“Okay. Go on, then, by all means.”

“The forest gave us magic, and we sacrificed it blood in turn. But the centaurs, by the same storytelling tradition, were like us, exiles to the forest, and it gave them a gift – magic, but also the strength and speed of horses, in exchange for being bound to the woods in a way most wizards aren’t. They can’t leave Scotland, I don’t think; Peryle is honestly playing a dangerous game just living in a human structure like Hogwarts.”

“What does this have to do with the Mother?”

“Well, she’s either the first of them, and they’re all her literal children, or she’s just a very old centaur who got _really_ into magic in her youth and ended up with immortality and a very close relationship with the woods. In any case, she’s been alive since before Roman times… she’s the closest thing to a god I’ve ever encountered. That I’ve ever heard of, in five years in the magical world.”

Harry looks at Tom, at his hand frozen halfway in its course to the rosary Harry knows still hangs beneath his robes, thinks of the stutter in his voice at the word _immortality_. What had dragged this strange boy, beloved of gods, into Voldemort’s madness?

“Here, Harry, look,” Tom says, walking faster. “They live just down this hill – see the trees thinning out?”

They break through the tree line into a wide meadow, all sun and a rainbow of wildflowers. “What now?”

“Now we wait. The unicorns will find us,” Tom sits down, swallowed by the tall grass.

Harry sits, too. “Tom?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t seek out your parents. Please.”

The flowers around them shift slightly in the breeze, like they’re waiting for Tom to give them some new, nightmarish form. “I can’t just not, Harry. Now that I know I’ve been looking in all the wrong places – you _have_ your family, you could never understand.”

“It’s been fifty years, Tom, they’re long dead. And you have _my family_ , too. Don’t act like you’re somehow worse off in this time than I am.”

“So maybe it’s not about family,” Tom says from somewhere to his left. He’s lain down, hidden now from Harry’s sight by fistfuls of bright orangey flowers. “Maybe it’s about legacy.”

Harry thinks of Luke Skywalker and _I am your father_ and has to bite into his arm to stifle a wild, humorless laugh. “You oughtn’t define yourself by the past, Tom. You –” he thinks of the oak’s song, tears gleaming on high cheekbones, Geoff’s delighted laughter. “You can do so much better than your ancestors.”

“But I _can’t_ , not until I know who I am – more than a Mudblood, more than an orphaned bastard rotting in the ashes of London.”

Some of the flowers, Harry thinks, may have grown teeth. He can’t quite tell. _Think like a Slytherin_ , he tells himself. _He’s not listening to logic; cut him a deal_. “One year,” Harry says. “Give it that long before you go searching for your answers. In return,” he thinks of the wand lore books he’d seen Tom reading in the weeks after their duel, “I’ll tell you why our wands reacted the way they did when we fought.”

“Baby snake’s first cunning scheme,” Tom groans from the grass. “Cute. You got me, Potter. I’ll bite. What’s wrong with my wand?”

“There’s nothing _wrong_ with it. We have twin wand cores. Our wands are brothers, and they didn’t like us fighting.”

“There was nothing about that in any book I read.”

“That’s because it’s rare as hell, apparently.”

Tom sits up, hair imperfect, squinting in the sunlight. “Then how do you know about it?”

Harry rolls his eyes and gestures to the nape of his neck. “Hiding my boring bits with mystery, remember? I can’t start spilling my sources. It would ruin my, er, enigmatic aura.”

“You’re such a _problem child_ , Harry Potter.”

“You know, one of these days you’re going to slip up and call me by my real name in public.”

Tom shrugs, smiling slightly, then stiffens. “They’re here.”

“Oh,” Harry gets to his feet, spotting the unicorns at the edge of the wood and feeling an urge to straighten up his school robes and make himself presentable for the beasts. “Shit. Er, I had a Care teacher say they don’t care for men, is that –”

“Just a myth,” Tom says. “They don’t like people who lack respect for others. It just so happens that, statistically speaking… well. I don’t think that’s a problem you have, Harry.”

“What, you think I’m respectful?”

“Of everyone but me,” he amends, waving at the unicorns. “Fennel, is that you? I’m home!”

The last time Harry had been this close to a unicorn, he realizes, Tom had been with him, too. But that unicorn had been dead, leaking silvery blood out into the forest floor.

Watching this scene – the unicorn, spindlier than a horse, angular and elegant, sniffing Tom’s face and nuzzling his shoulders like an overlarge cat – Harry feels bile clawing its way up his throat.

“Fennel, this is Harry,” Tom is saying. “He’s a friend – the oaks want to talk with him, can you imagine that?”

Harry finds his vision suddenly full of a goatlike face and a perfect spiral horn. “I didn’t know they could be so affectionate,” he says wonderingly, scratching Fennel behind the ears. “Or that they lived so long.”

“They’re immortal as long as their forest stays healthy,” Tom says. “And they’re very affectionate in private, but when they’re in front of humans – well, one must keep up appearances.”

“Of course,” Harry says drily.

“Oh, don’t give me that look! You know, you’re in Slytherin too, now. You’ll be expected to agree with that sort of thing.”

Harry starts formulating a retort, but somewhere between the gold of Tom’s eyes in the sunlight and the feel of Fennel’s whiskery lips on his hands, words escape him.

***

They return to Hogwarts a bit later than Tom had planned, but they still manage to catch the last couple minutes of lunch. Harry dashes down a sandwich and nicks a bunch of grapes to bring with them to the common room. Tom wraps a quiche in a napkin and steals a fork, even though he already has a whole stash of forks stolen from the Great Hall locked away in his trunk. It’s a bit of a tradition at this point, a tribute to his childhood kleptomania.

They return to the common room to find a snarl of Slytherins clustered around a group of some kind of devices. Each emits colored smoke and muted music. “What are those things? I didn’t see them last night.”

“They were there, just not… turned on. I suppose one of our year mates might know? They look a bit like a video game thing,” says Harry with a frown.

Tom scans the room. “Parkinson!”

Pansy, curled up on a sofa by the window, looks up sharply and comes over, tucking a bookmark into what looks like a Muggle romance novel. “You can call me Pansy, you know.”

“I know,” Tom says, chewing on his lip. “Pansy. What are those devices?”

“Oh, the arcade machines? They’re an altered version of a Muggle thing. You put in a token and it lets you play a game.”

One of the machines starts rattling. Another emits a sad trombone line. “Like Monopoly?” Tom tilts his head to the side, examining the devices with renewed interest. “Can I give it a try? I love Monopoly.”

Harry groans and mutters something about psychopathy and cousins. Tom elbows him.

Pansy blinks. “Um, the prefects control the flow of tokens, so you’ll have to ask Susan. That was Percy Weasley’s idea… something about reinforcing the authority of the prefects. Do be careful, though – there’s a subsection of sixth years that are _really_ in to the pixeconomy. It gets messy.”

“Er – what?”

“Don’t worry about it, Harry dear. Oh, here’s Calcifer! Hey, Lestrange! The new kids want to have a go at the arcade!”

Calcifer rushes over, looking rather pale. “Can’t be handing out tokens willy-nilly, Pans. That’s a shortcut to ruin in times like these…”

Tom finds that he doesn’t like being called ‘new kid.’

“Oh, fine.” Pansy sighs, rummaging in her pockets. “I’ll give you each a token now, with the expectation that you each give me the next two you earn.”

“That’s a terrible deal. I’ll take it,” Tom says firmly. He’ll show them all his talent at Monopoly and all Monopoly-related activities, they will all bow at his feet, and… well, mostly he’s just excited about getting to see more magic-altered Muggle technology from the future.

“Looks like Centipede is open,” Calcifer says as the sad trombone plays again and one of the machines squirts an apparently losing player.

“Okay,” Pansy leads Tom over to the machine. “You have two controls: move, and shoot. Your objective is to kill the centipede and not get hit. Got it?”

“Just spam the shoot button and don’t die,” says Calcifer. “We’ll sit here and scream advice. Ready?”

“I suppose.”

“Okay, put the token in this slot, here. Now look at the screen. The rocket ship is you, right? Try moving and shooting. There you go, easy, right? Here comes the centipede, now! Get it!”

An alien forest is painted behind the glass of the screen, three dimensional and beautiful in its neon colors. Tom sees mushrooms, plant life, his own little ship, and – there, at the top of the screen, a segmented creature with glittering eyes and sharp teeth.

“That is a big step up from pixel graphics,” Harry says nonsensically.

Tom taps the shoot button. A mushroom takes the hit.

“Move around so you can hit the centipede,” says Calcifer.

Tom hits the centipede and grins, expecting victory. The machine shudders. The centipede splits in two. Pansy groans, “no, Tom, you have to aim for the _head_.”

In under a minute, Tom finds himself overrun with alien fauna. The game sends a jet of water into his right eye, triumphantly sad-tromboning.

“Yeah mate, I think you’re better off selling your tokens,” says Calcifer. “See, it’s not even bothering to record that game on the weekly scoreboard… That’s rough.”

“Harry, it’s your turn!” Pansy looks gleeful at Tom’s abject failure.

Harry, of course, turns out to be a ‘Centipede mastermind,’ as Calcifer puts it. He survives for nearly a half hour, gathering a crowd of delighted lower years. The other two arcade machines have been forgotten in favor of watching Harry play; the Centipede device has been spitting out vanilla-smelling smoke for the last five minutes of his run.

“That means he’s scored an all-time record,” says an awed Calcifer when Tom asks about the smoke. “This is going to be a pixeconomical nightmare, if he always plays this well…”

“I’ll bet he does,” Tom says darkly. “Harry is freakishly competent at the _strangest_ things.”

“Is he your second?”

Tom fiddles with his wand, hidden up the sleeve of his robe, and listens to the triumphant, crashing brass of the arcade as Harry finally dies to the centipede. “I don’t know _what_ he is.”

***

The rest of the weekend slips like sand through Harry’s fingers. He pulls out all the old tricks to weather the adoration of the Centipede-loving masses: laugh and deflect, point at luck, refuse offerings of more tokens.

He spends most of Sunday with Lyra, who he finally puts together is Sirius’s niece; she has his wild laugh and dark hair, and a slightly unhinged sense of imagination that fits well with Harry’s style of humor. Pansy hangs out with them, too, but he can’t quite let down his guard around her, the same way he hasn’t yet fully forgiven the Malfoy of this world.

Tom and Calcifer plot the day away in the shadows of the common room, poring over diagrams that Harry is certain have nothing to do with classwork. He’s reached the approximation of a friendship with Tom, and Calcifer seems like an agreeable person, but Harry doesn’t much care for the sight of them together – Tom goes a little bit crooked when he’s among the other Slytherins, and Harry can’t shake off the feeling that they’re all constantly weighing the best ways to kill each other.

Susan and Peryle have sat themselves down in another shadowy corner; they and the two groups keep throwing _looks_ in each other’s directions that make Harry quite nervous. When he asks Lyra about the whole thing, though, she just laughs at him. “Cal is playing a dangerous game, is all. No need for you to worry about it.”

Harry does worry, but then classes are starting up again and he has more important things to concern himself with.

“Welcome to the beginning of your fifth year. This class may be called ‘Dark Studies,’ but we will be performing very little actual Dark magic in this room. Instead, in this course we will be learning about the theory and history behind the Dark. Your other classes will be devoted to the practical applications of what you take away from this space.”

Their first class, of course, has to be the one that everyone is most dreading. Tom sits on the edge of his seat, apparently failing to restrain his excitement over the subject.

Snape paces in front of the Slytherins, stern as ever. “I will be very strict about your assignments. Dark magic is very dangerous, and it is likely that most of you will struggle with it. In that case, see this year as a means of better understanding Light magic. First term will be tough. Second term will be tougher. I will assign an essay every week for homework, each of which will require independent study and a significant time investment. Understood? Good. Please open to page 17 of your textbook…”

Harry takes two full pages of messy notes, interspersed with arrows reading ‘ _ask Tom_ ’, and walks out of class with his head spinning. “I hadn’t realized how many spells have Dark components.”

“Your magic is probably pretty balanced,” says Lyra. “My whole family’s Dark… I had to learn a bunch of tricks from them just to keep on top of my Lighter work during my earlier years.”

“We’ve Potions next,” Tom says, checking his schedule. “That’s still down in the dungeons, right? Well, I suppose if Slughorn is still teaching… he always was a creature of habit.”

“How’d you like Dark Studies?” Harry asks a little teasingly.

“Getting to take that class makes getting ripped out of time worth my while,” Tom hums.

“You absolute nerd.The Hat really should have put you away in Ravenclaw while it had the chance.”

“Didn’t even consider it,” Tom says a bit smugly. “No, I’m Slytherin through-and-through – you just don’t understand that it’s okay to have passion, Harry.”

“‘Slytherin through-and-through’? Tom, I watched you get Sorted. It took you at least three minutes. The Hat was sure debating _something_.”

Tom huffs and lengthens his stride, leaving Harry with Lyra and Pansy. Harry notes a flush of pink on his ears. “Weird.”

Potions class is awkward. Slughorn is an enormous, obsequious man who splits his attention between doting on Tom and actually teaching the class.

“Harry Partridge? Ah, yes, I recognize you… most certainly,” Slughorn says over attendance, frowning dubiously at Harry.

They brew the Draught of Peace. Harry does his best, but manages to fumble something up along the way. He turns in a potion that is a similar color to the ideal, but with the consistency of a thick paste. Tom, handing Slughorn his perfect result, frowns at Harry’s attempt but doesn’t comment.

After lunch, they go to Herbology with the Ravenclaws, where Sprout tells Tom, “the Minister told me you have quite the green thumb,” and Tom does his best to prove old Dumbledore right. The ‘Triangle of Death’ stares as he answers every question from Sprout with perfect accuracy, then demonstrates a flawless potting technique for a Venomous Tentacula. Harry, watching from his favorite seat in the back corner, notes the reactions of the class: whispering from the Ravenclaws, Susan going pink with delight, a hungry look in Calcifer Lestrange’s hooded eyes.

Harry digs into dinner heavy with the knowledge of how much homework he already has to get done – he’ll have to get started researching that Snape essay (two feet on how changing views on the Dark impact some smaller area of magic) by tonight if he’s going to have a shot at having it written within the week, and Sprout has assigned three hours of work in the greenhouses over the weekend. He’s dreading classes tomorrow; Lupin is a brilliant professor, but he’s also a big believer in the educational value of essays.

Tom, by contrast, is quietly glowing with delight over all the work. “I was thinking I would write about historical classifications of Dark creatures,” he tells Harry, spearing a potato. “I think there’s a lot of interesting ramifications of that – dragon classification, for example, is constantly shifting based on the politics of the time, because on one hand they’ve got their elemental nature –” he appears to notice Harry has stopped paying him much attention. “What do you think you’ll write yours on?”

“I was thinking I’d just do it on the rise and fall of the popularity of the Jelly-Legs hex,” Harry admits.

“But that was one of the examples Snape used in class,” Tom protests. “Everyone’ll be doing that.”

“He gave us some books to start out with for researching it, is all. It’ll be easier to get done than something completely original.”

Tom bites his lip, surveying Harry through narrowed eyes, then goes back to his potatoes.

Harry feels as though he’s done something wrong, but for the life of him can’t comprehend what.

***

Tuesday is to be a day with purpose. Tom spends extra time in front of the mirror, making certain his newly shorn hair looks perfect. He runs into Daphne Greengrass on his way out, and takes the chance to escort her to breakfast.

“Here I thought Bones had staked her claim on you,” she says over a poppyseed muffin.

Tom slices his French toast into neat squares. “You’ll find I’m not exactly looking for someone to follow, Miss Greengrass.”

Daphne smiles cuttingly. “Lofty goals for someone born so long ago, wouldn’t you think?”

“Are you calling me old, Greengrass?” Tom asks, amused despite himself.

She snorts delicately, raising a goblet to her lips.

“I’ll be frank, then. You’re languishing, Daphne. You’re never going to achieve any sort of victory over Bones at this rate… I’ve spoken with Lestrange, and I think we can both be certain he’s not going to come down on your side of this conflict anytime soon. You have three options right now.”

She impales a strawberry on her fork rather pointedly. Tom doesn’t have to make eye contact to know she’s fantasizing about doing the same thing to his eyeballs.

“First: you could maintain course. Your sycophants will likely come to their senses within the year and fall in with Bones’ people. Second: just give up and let Bones have her victory, try and scrape up whatever mercy she can offer you. Based on what I saw this Friday, though, she doesn’t care for you enough to let you in anywhere but at the periphery of her little group.”

“I have contacts in other Houses,” Daphne says tightly. “I’m not helpless. Pansy is persuadable, and Michael will come to my side if she does.”

“Maybe,” Tom says, sipping his pumpkin juice to hide a smile. “But you’re leaving _me_ out of your calculations. Look, I’m not sure precisely what went down last year, but it seems like it was fairly decisive. I’m not asking anything of you right now, but do try and keep your mind open. I’m giving you an opportunity. That’s probably more than you’ve earned.”

He stands, catching her eye and sending out a brief mental probe – not enough to read anything, really, other than a rather more violent murder fantasy than expected – but something that anyone with any Occlumency training would notice.

Greengrass’s façade slips.

“I’ll see you in Defense,” he says breezily, leaving her to her breakfast. This might be more difficult than anticipated. He’d expected her logical side to be stronger than her pride.

Defense, though – well. Tom will dazzle them all, definitively lash Calcifer to his side, and make the rest of the year question their assorted allegiances. _And impress Harry_ , whispers part of him. He hushes it.

Alice Longbottom is a gentle woman with watchful blue eyes and a round face. “Mister Partridge – ah, and Mister Riddle, Dumbledore’s protégé! – welcome to my class,” she says, finding them before they take their seats. “We meet Tuesdays and Thursdays. You’ll get into the swing of things soon enough, but know to expect practical work on Tuesdays and lecture on Thursdays. Today’s probably going to be a bit stressful – sorry about that! I’m sure it’ll be at least very educational.”

Harry cracks his knuckles, whispering, “that was extremely ominous.”

Professor Longbottom levitates the desks all up and sticks them to the ceiling as the rest of the Slytherins file in. “I hope you all had a wonderful break! Leave your bags over by the door. Now, I know we decided after that fiasco two years ago –” in the periphery of Tom’s vision, he catches Daphne smirking “– that we were never going to run another dueling tournament in this class. However, I’d like to think you’ve all have matured since then.”

Nervous laughter breaks out. Susan looks uncomfortable.

“More importantly, you have two new classmates this year. I think an hour’s near-constant dueling will make for an excellent pre-test!”

Tom could cackle with glee. This is more perfect that he could have planned. Harry looks rather less thrilled.

Professor Longbottom sets about pairing them up, and Tom finds himself with Harry’s roommate, Michael Corner. Michael looks very nervous. As he should.

Elsewhere, Harry and the weedy Nott face off. Lyra and Susan exchange soft teasing insults, grinning at each other. Tom resolves to end his match with Michael quickly so he can watch the fight between the girls.

“Everyone ready? This will not be graded, but I will make notes on all of your performances so I understand what material we’re going to need to cover this year. Good. Wands up – take your stances – fire!”

Michael launches immediately into a barrage of low-level curses. Not really testing Tom, just hoping for a lucky hit. So, he’s given up on winning before they’ve even started… a pity. Tom supposes this at least indicates his posturing since Friday has been effective.

Tom dodges a hex, blocks another, and catches a bright _Expelliarmus_ on the tip of his wand, propelling it back at his opponent. Michael jumps out of the way with a shout – straight into Tom’s _Petrificus totalus_. “ _Expelliarmus_ ,” Tom incants with a sigh, snatching Michael’s dark mahogany wand out of the air. “Good match,” he lies with a smile and a countercurse, then turns to watch the other bouts.

Harry is sitting on the floor, polishing his glasses. Nott must not have put up much of a fight. As Tom’s watching, Peryle lands a neat disarming charm on freckled Finch-Fletchley, who can’t get up a shield fast enough. Greengrass’s fight with Eliza Dearborn seems to have been similarly short-lived. Pansy and Calcifer are still fighting – one of them has conjured a pair of ferrets that seem intent on tripping the both of them, so there’s no knowing who’s going to come out on top of that one.

The real spectacle is the duel between Susan and Lyra, who have dragged desks down from the ceiling and set them battling. They’ve each painted their desks very bright colors: blue for Lyra, and an eye-searing magenta for Susan. Lyra’s has sprouted lion’s claws, while Susan’s appears to have chainsaw blades running around its rim.

It becomes rapidly clear that they are each very invested in the success of their desks and not at all invested in the outcome of the duel. Tom counts five blatant moments when either of the girls could easily have ended the fight, but Susan seems too preoccupied with trying to affix more blades to her desk, and Lyra just keeps adding polka dots.

“Do you need me to set a timer?” says Professor Longbottom drily after the sixth obvious missed opportunity to end the ‘duel.’

Lyra’s table very suddenly sprouts elephant tusks and gores its opponent, and in the next moment Susan’s wand is flying through the air. “That won’t be necessary, Professor,” Lyra says, catching the wand and beaming. “Who’s next?”

“Go fight Partridge. Riddle, let’s see how you do against Peryle. Greengrass, Lestrange. Let’s get this moving, we only have half the class period left!”

Peryle grins sharply. She is very tall. Tom tries not to seem intimidated.

“Wands – stances – fire!”

Tom dips into a crouch, staring into Peryle’s alien eyes. He’s fought centaurs before – that she has a wand instead of a bow and arrows won’t matter too much, surely.

Peryle, it turns out, is excellent at nonverbal magic, and for all Tom tries he can’t get a lock on her body language. It’s a bit like fighting Harry had been, at first, but after a minute of defensive dueling Tom figures out her spell patterns and presses forwards. There’s nothing much to transfigure in the classroom, not with all the tables cleared away, so Tom falls back on an old trick.

His trusty handkerchief, which had waited a long fifty years for his return, shifts happily into a python for him. Tom gives it wings, just because he can. Susan had, after all, told him to show off…

Using the snake-kerchief as a distraction, Tom throws himself low to the ground and sends stinging hexes at Peryle’s vulnerable knees – just strong enough to distract, but weak enough not to pull her attention away from the serpent.

Peryle sends a powerful freezing charm at the space where Tom had been, sending his conjured snake plummeting, but missing Tom himself. He tries to disarm her, but she sidesteps and opts to charge straight for him rather than counterattack with magic.

Tom grins, twirling his wand, and the floorboards at her front hooves sprout tree branches and snarl around her legs. At her current velocity, she has no room to correct, and ends up sprawled in an uncontrolled fall. “ _Expelliarmus_ ,” Tom says in vicious satisfaction, grinning as he takes his second wand of the day.

“Oh, well done,” says Peryle crossly. “Will you remind _them_ that they are dead?”

She’s still held tightly to the ground by the newly branching floorboards. “I’m not sure they _are_ dead,” he says, impressed. “Look, they’ve got little leaves.”

Peryle glares at him, and even disarmed and kneeling her expression is quite intimidating. He hands her wand back and returns the flooring to its usual state.

Tom has, once again, missed Harry’s duel. He and Lyra sit together, watching the other two matches – Greengrass is casting some sort of complicated wind magic while poor Calcifer, clearly outclassed, just tries to keep from getting hit by any of her more commonplace spells. Within the next minute, the little storm in the classroom has reached such a pitch that Professor Longbottom intervenes, telling Calcifer, “there’s no shame in calling off a duel you’ve clearly lost, boy. Especially before you end up causing serious property damage.”

“I’m sorry, Professor. I’ll do better in the future,” says Calcifer, a bitter set to his mouth as Daphne’s hurricane dies around him.

“I was going to have the three remaining combatants each fight one another so we could have a formal victor,” Longbottom says, gentle face falling into a scowl, “But we only have time for one more bout. Mister Riddle, Mister Partridge, if you would?”

“Er,” Harry says. “We kind of can’t. Our wands have – a thing.”

“Apparently we have twin wand cores,” Tom translates.

“Not quite sure what that means, but I’ll let you off the hook this time. If it turns out you two are fibbing, though, it’ll be detention. For now, who wants to try your shot at Miss Greengrass?”

“I’ll do it,” Tom says, trying to sound casual.

“Thank you, Mister Riddle – Greengrass, are you ready?”

“Yes, Professor Longbottom,” Daphne says, looking barely ruffled by the past two duels.

Longbottom smiles. “No storms this time, okay? Good. Go!”

Daphne immediately conjures a wall of fire to close in on Tom, which is – not good. Tom doesn’t have a reliable counter to fire thanks to his complete inability to pull off Light magic like _Aguamenti_. He pulls out the floorboard trick again, animating the burning wood and assembling it into the shambling imitation of a person. He dodges a couple of surprisingly nasty spells as it lumbers toward Daphne, firing back a handful of perfunctory disarmers.

Daphne apparently has no problem with _Augamenti_ , as she sends a strong jet of water at the burning floor golem. Tom seizes on the chance to pour more magic into the plant monolith, and it erupts with leaves and unravels itself into a net. Daphne just sends more fire, turning the net to ash. She looks a bit disheveled now, which is promising. Tom decides to take a page out of Lyra’s book and pull one of the desks down from the ceiling, ignoring Longbottom’s muttered, “three tables lost on the first day of class… this is why I don’t let them do tournaments.”

He turns his desk a pretty mint-green, thinking of his furniture down below the lake. Then he transfigures it almost fully into a saber-toothed tiger. With wings, again, because that had worked well with the snake. Its back half is still wood, but it must seem very intimidating to Daphne, because she screams. The tiger prepares to pounce, and Tom remembers in a flash the bright terror of the manticore attack –

“That’s enough, now,” says Professor Longbottom. The conjured beast halts, folding its wings and standing at attention for the professor. She offers it a scratch under the chin, then strips away Tom’s enchantments to leave just the plain table. “I think that’s a good time to leave class off. Good work, everyone. No homework for Thursday.”

The Slytherins move out in a chattering mass, sweeping up their bags and setting off for a well-deserved lunch.

“I didn’t get to see either of your fights,” Tom says to Harry. “I confess myself disappointed… how did you take Lyra out that quickly?”

Harry shrugs. “She put up a lazy _Protego_ and I blasted through it.”

Tom nearly trips. “What kinds of spells were you using, Partridge? This was supposed to be a friendly sort of duel.”

“Er – just _Expelliarmus_.”

“Interesting,” Tom says, mind whirring.

He’s been trying to formulate some explanation for the outcome of his duel with Harry, the way he had been overwhelmed by the power pouring at him through his wand. He’d thought maybe the wands had pulled at the reservoir of their Light magic, in which case a dead flobberworm could have beaten Tom. Or maybe it had been a contest of raw willpower – he’d been very tired that day, and Harry is nothing if not _willful_.

But if Harry has the kind of firepower to break through _Protego_ s with an _Expelliarmus_ – well then.

The elves serve quesadillas for lunch. Harry drowns his in hot sauce while Tom lapses into happy plotting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how to write duels so I wrote Pokemon battles instead don't @ me
> 
> Hopefully you're starting to get a feel for the OCs - the only ones you really need to keep track of are Calcifer Lestrange, Lyra Black, and Peryle the centaur. Any questions about those three are welcomed!
> 
> In other news, I've decided to shift the posting schedule to once a week instead of twice a week. My muse has been really struggling lately and my writing pace has slowed dramatically - I'm hoping that giving myself a couple weeks of break from writing this story (and adjusting to current events) will refresh my creative juices! Slower update intervals mean I won't feel like I'm going to run out of content for all of you wonderful people anytime soon. In the meantime, updates will continue in a steady (but slightly slower) stream!
> 
> I hope you are all doing well. Have a virtual kitten hug.  
> <3


	9. Mantle Studies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom does some research, Harry sinks into a depression, and a trip to Hogsmeade makes everyone feel a little bit better about life.

By the end of the week, Tom fancies that he has quite destabilized the power balance between the fifth year Slytherins. Between his three decisive duels on Tuesday and a bit of one-on-one posturing, he’s made his viability as a leader quite clear. So, when he walks into the private common to see a covert meeting between Calcifer, Pansy, Lyra, and Michael, he assumes they’re talking about him and ghosts in to eavesdrop.

“– no, it has to be the pharaoh. She’s the most powerful necromancer in a century, and like, look at how loyal her court is. That’s not normal,” Lyra is saying softly.

Well, then. This will not be the first time Tom has overestimated his own importance.

“You’re just saying that because Wizarding Britain doesn’t have a sovereign. There’s nothing abnormal about loyalty directed towards a ruler,” Pansy murmurs. “I think it’s been on the move ever since they assassinated that man in Rome.”

“Pans, everyone knows the Medici heir was just a con artist,” Michael says. “I don’t think anyone has openly held it since Grindelwald – I mean, the eyes are a bit of a giveaway.”

“That’s what glamours are for!”

“Yeah, but why would you want to hide it?”

Tom smiles. Perhaps they _are_ talking about him.

“Oh – hey, Tom,” says Calcifer, and his three companions go quiet, attention snapping to Tom.

“Hello,” he says pleasantly, making himself comfortable. “What are we talking about?”

Lyra picks at her nails. “We’re just chatting about the current location of the Dark Mantle.”

“Truly scintillating. I must comment that, back in my day, we didn’t discuss such… delicate matters in public,” Tom says.

“That’s because Grindelwald was holding the thing, and everyone was terrified of him,” says Pansy. “But it’s been missing for the last fifty years. It’s worth a bit of speculation.”

Tom leans his chin on his fist, seeing himself reflected in their minds, drawn in elegant, sweeping lines, mixed danger and potential. The weight of destiny burns hot along his spine. “Must be refreshing – no one running around with red eyes, declaring themselves Dark Lord.”

“Not that we need a Dark Lord, what with Dumbledore’s magic equality laws,” Michael says, narrowing his eyes.

“I never have understood that,” Pansy says. “The magic equality work he does. Why should he care about treatment of Dark wizards? I mean, that’s kind of the opposite of his job. Not that he’s ever officially announced that he bears the Light Mantle – but he’s not exactly _subtle_ about it, is he?”

“They say he was just teaching class as usual, and then – _poof_! Hair went white, and then ran off to go take Grindelwald down,” Lyra giggles. “Not subtle in the least.”

“Maybe he’s working on magic equality because he’s a good Minister who takes his duty to the British people seriously,” Calcifer is saying, but Tom hardly hears.

He’s too busy having an epiphany.

Dumbledore’s strangely flat eyes from that night in the Ministry, his popularity with the old families, the reforms – “oh,” he says in a small voice. Only Merlin himself had ever pulled it off, and even that was largely mythical, but if anyone were manage it in the modern day, it would be Dumbledore –

“You all right there, Tom?”

“Fine,” Tom says. “I just need to check something at the library. Excuse me.”

Harry’s in the library, too, scowling over some thick tome. Tom sits down next to him, opening a copy of _Understanding Grindelwald’s Rise: Parallels to Earlier Dark Lords_.

“Hello,” Harry says moodily. “You’re at the history books again?”

“Mantle studies,” Tom says. “Something rather monumental has just occurred to me, and I’m – verifying.”

“‘Mantle studies’?”

“Y’know, tracing the passage of the Mantles throughout the centuries,” Tom raps on the cover of another book he’s grabbed: _A Dark Lineage: Merlin to Poliakoff_.

“Tom, that means nothing to me.”

“Oh, of course not. I always forget what a mess your timeline’s educational system was.”

Harry, clearly sensing a lecture brewing on the horizon, puts his book down.

“Right, so around the sixteenth century, this historian Chroniculus Punnet published a book entitled _History through the ‘Mantle Lens’_ that basically examines patterns in Wizarding history,” Tom explains. “Every other generation a single Dark Lord pops up somewhere in Europe or North Africa, and what he calls a ‘champion of the Light’ rises to oppose them. It’s a pattern that goes back millennia, and Punnet came up with a bunch of examples in his book that made it very clearly significant. Of course, he framed it as having to do with human nature and power vacuums, but –”

Harry is giving him a _look_. He does that a lot, and it makes Tom deeply uncomfortable.

“Anyway. Later historians dug more into Punnet’s ‘theory of Mantles’ and found a lot more weird parallels between Dark Lords throughout history. Repeated allusions to ‘burning’ eyes, often coming to power out of complete obscurity, sometimes Metamorphmagic abilities.”

The _look_ from Harry has evolved into a wide-eyed stare.

“Um. Paired with the tendency for their Light counterparts to have white hair and a strong affinity for fire magic, it was kind of suspicious. Officially, it’s just a funny historical pattern. It’s pretty widely accepted that it’s more than that, though: two Mantles – no one’s got any idea what they really are, but they seem semi-sentient – one Light and one Dark, usually in opposition, body-hopping around the remnants of the Roman Empire since, like, 500 B.C.E. When one host dies, their Mantle leaves them to find someone new, usually the most powerful magic user of the next generation.”

“So… there’s a mystical force running around giving people weird powers and lighting their eyes on fire? The magical world never fails to surprise.”

“Turning their eyes _red_ , to be more accurate. But… yeah, that’s what we think. It explains why our people’s history is so cyclical, and part of why Slytherins hyper fixate on hierarchies. If you can become part of the inner circle of a future Dark Lord, you’re set for life. It’s a one-in-a-thousand chance, of course, but that’s just how Darker social groups are structured…”

Harry chews on his lip. “That’s why you’re so sure that everyone’s going to fall perfectly in line with you.”

“That’s why everyone _is_ falling in line.”

“That’s why you’re friends with terrifying demigods.”

“The Mother? Yeah. Well, mostly because of the oaks, but yeah.”

“Why are you reading books about ‘Mantles,’ then? You seem well-versed in the theory.”

“The Dark Mantle has been missing since Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald. I think I know where it is, but I need to be certain.”

Harry looks like he’s going to ask for more, but Tom cuts him off. He’s not ready to share the puzzle pieces clicking together in his head quite yet.

“What are _you_ reading?”

Harry angles his book so Tom can read its spine: _How to Train Your Demonic Hellspawn_.

“The manticore? Shouldn’t you be working on your essay for Snape?”

“I, er, I already finished it.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Look, Tom, there’s something bigger going on with the manticore’s rider, I just know it. That’s a whole lot more important than schoolwork.”

Tom pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing. “Harry, you need to keep your grades up. If you’re going to write the same boring essay as half the class, you need to make it good, or Snape will mark you down.”

“It’ll be fine, don’t worry. It’s Friday, anyway. Give me a break,” Harry says crossly, burrowing back into his tome.

Tom leaves him to his little independent study project, checking his books out with the librarian so he can read alone in his room.

***

Susan calls another strategy meeting Sunday night. He and Calcifer wander into their room’s little common space late, and find themselves in the middle of a rather tense situation.

Harry is sitting on the arm of his green chair, looking confused. Everyone else is standing.

“Calcifer,” Susan says sweetly as he and Tom file in. “Maybe you’ll be able to explain this?”

The emerald green couch for Susan’s cronies appears to have shrunk. A modest chair has appeared beside Tom’s more plush affair.

“Oh,” says Calcifer, tucking a strand of densely curled hair behind his ear. “Well, shit. That moved a bit faster than expected. I’m sorry, Susan.”

Susan glares fiercely at Tom, unwittingly letting him into her mind. Seeing the fear underlying her apparent irritation, he smiles pleasantly back.

“I suppose it’s good to know where everyone stands,” she says, playing with her hair in a way that somehow comes across as incredibly violent. “Let’s all sit down.”

Calcifer stays standing. “Sit down, Calcifer,” Tom says, patting the new chair. That chat he’d walked into this morning – it really _had_ been about him. Good to know. He’ll have to bump up his schedule for recruiting the rest of the Lestrange-Parkinson-Black-Corner group.

Susan launches into a reminder about academic rigor and the importance of fifth year, urging them all to help tutor anyone among them who finds themselves struggling with any classes. Tom stops listening halfway through.

“Have a great second week, everyone,” she finally says, a sunny smile masking her lingering irritation at Tom and Calcifer. More quietly, she says, “Tom, can I speak with you?”

“‘What’s up’?” he says in imitation of Geoffrey, noting with gratification how Calcifer hangs back.

“Oh, I just feel like maybe we should _talk things through_ before you go forward with your plans to launch a shadowy power struggle against me.”

“Oh, don’t be a Hufflepuff. It would just be a little power struggle,” Tom curls his lip, leaning back in his armchair. “I think we could pull it off without any real calamities. Unless this is a surrender…?”

“I’m not Daphne Greengrass. You can’t play on my pride and expect to get anywhere,” Susan pulls her strawberry blonde hair over one shoulder, starting up an idle braid. “I don’t think you’re quite as arrogant as you like to appear, Tom.”

“Was that meant to be a compliment? It didn’t land.”

Susan shrugs. “I’m proposing a truce until next fall. We get through our Dark year, give George Weasley his House Cup, and freely duke it out for sixth year.”

“You’re just buying yourself time before I inevitably crush you.”

“And you’re grumpy because you know it’s a sensible plan. Besides, this way we can be friends. I like you, Riddle, even if you are a bastard.”

“Friends, huh?” He seems to be acquiring rather a lot of those lately. Tom stretches his right hand, feeling the pull of his time travel scars. “You’re lucky I’ve mellowed out over the summer. God. Fine, Susan Bones, we’ll be _friends_. Won’t stop me from destroying you when the time comes.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she says sweetly. They shake hands. “Good night, Tom!”

Calcifer and turns to him as Susan departs. “This way I get Peryle on my side,” Tom says gruffly. “This was a carefully calculated strategic maneuver.”

Harry, who must have been waiting in the shadows of the entryway, laughs.

“Where did you come from, Partridge?” Calcifer jumps.

Harry grins. His green eyes would have made the expression utterly terrifying, and Tom finds himself once again thrown off-balance by the deceivingly gentle face of his glamour.

“You really _did_ mellow out over the summer, didn’t you?” says Harry, looking disgustingly fond.

Tom rises, brushing the other boys off. “I will dismember you and feed your testicles to Fennel,” he points at Harry, who just laughs again.

Tom sweeps away to the restroom, and Justin Finch-Fletchley’s quick departure at the sight of the murder on his face only cheers him slightly.

***

Harry wakes Monday morning to a muted green dawn and Michael’s rumbling snores. He lays there for a moment, staring into the blur of the stone ceiling and tracing the two-month-old lines etched into his right hand.

His toes, sticking out the end of his blanket, are bitterly cold. He cracks them. Michael grumbles something nonsensical about “pigeons can’t have my cinnamon roll – nooOOoo,” and rolls over.

It’s just – Harry’s so homesick. Worse, he’s not sure what he’s homesick for – the living room at the Potters’, perhaps, or Gryffindor Tower. Ron and Hermione, whom he had left in the middle of the night. Not the Ron and Hermione here, Henry’s friends. He longs for the people who had fought by his side, who had been forged, like him, in the heat of Voldemort’s madness. Were they still out there somewhere, in an adjacent timeline? Or had they simply ceased to exist when he slipped away?

It’s supremely ironic that Tom Riddle should have become his closest confidante in this backwards place. Harry is coming to feel that he should have preferred to stay in his own timeline, back when he had a purpose, when all his jagged edges felt like tools, not things to mark him apart from the other children. He feels like a real snail fitted into a jigsaw puzzle of a garden, an idealized vision of his familiar world, and himself so terribly out of place with the other pieces.

He dresses himself, showers, tries for some more reading on manticores before getting a headache and stopping. He finds, tucked in with his school things, the drawing Dahlia had done a few days ago; she must have slipped it in before they left. He smooths it out on top of his trunks, tracing the confident lines. A dark-haired boy on the back of a unicorn. It’s rendered beautifully, but something about it sends a shiver of disquiet through him. He folds the drawing neatly and places it into his sock drawer.

They go to class. Harry hands in his mess of a Dark Studies essay, resigning himself to another three years of Snape’s disapproval. In Herbology, he sits with Henry and Hermione – and Malfoy, of course, but he’s ignoring that part of the arrangement.

“I knew Tom was a suck-up, but I didn’t realize how bad it was,” says a mournful Henry, watching as Tom rattles off no less than seven properties of some obscure fungus.

“We’ll beat him to the next question,” Hermione says doubtfully.

They do not.

Hermione and Harry partner for their classwork, which is to help pollinate the singing plum trees. Sprout hands out dead hummingbirds on sticks for collecting the pollen.

“They’re quite beautiful in death, I think,” says Lyra, examining the little patch of scarlet on the tiny corpse’s throat. Tom, her partner, nods solemnly. Most of the students, though, seem rather upset about the whole affair, and take to the pollination with grim determination.

Passing her hummingbird from flower to flower, Hermione says, “Harry, we have an inter-House study group that meets Monday evenings in an abandoned classroom. Tonight’s our first session of the year. If you’d like, you’re welcome to come – so’s Tom, even if he is an unbearable teacher’s pet.”

This is rich coming from Hermione, but Harry does want to come. As it turns out, so does Tom – “excellent opportunity to grow our influence outside of the House,” he tells Harry, “particularly useful since that little stunt of Susan’s…” Harry, never quite sure of the difference between Tom’s ‘thinking’ and ‘angry’ faces, leaves him to stare very intently at the wall for the next several minutes.

They show up at five o’clock, finding that the ‘abandoned classroom’ Hermione had advertised is actually quite nicely outfitted with wooden furniture, a great blue rug, and a crackling fireplace. The study group is largely Ravenclaws, with the addition of Ron, Neville, Parvati, and some Hufflepuffs Harry doesn’t recognize thrown in for flavor.

Tom almost immediately sets off to talk to Dean Thomas, leaving Harry to sit between Ron and an unfamiliar boy, awkwardly shuffling his papers. “Oh, don’t bother with that,” says Ron. “We say it’s a study group, but it’s really more of a social thing.”

“I like the sound of that,” Harry says, which would have made his Ron grin.

Calcifer and Lyra filter in at some point, chatting very energetically about beet juice.

“Hey, Harry! I should have guessed you and Tom would be here,” says Lyra, sitting on the back of the couch behind him.

“Should I have guessed _you_ would be here?”

She shrugs. “I’m Henry’s, er, god-cousin? Yeah. So we’ve known each other for ages, and he likes some Slytherin representation at these little sessions.”

“And Calcifer?”

“Well, obviously the same goes for him.”

“I don’t follow.”

Lyra kicks the back of his couch cushion. “My parents took him in when he was five years old, after his mother went crazy and murdered his father.”

“I had no idea,” Harry pivots to meet Lyra’s bright blue eyes. She smiles, doll-like.

“He watched it happen, did you know? Rather horrible. He still has nightmares.”

“Are you sure he’d be okay with you telling me about this?”

“Pansy and I looked at the genealogy together. The Partridges have no small amount of Lestrange blood, too… The blood madness is a shared burden for all us purebloods. Michael told Pansy you cry in your sleep some nights.”

Harry draws his arms tight to his chest.

Lyra watches him for a moment, frowning. “Oh – that was cruel of me to say, wasn’t it? I apologize.”

And though she goes quiet for the rest of the evening, Harry can’t let go of the ball of misery accumulating in his gut. He watches, as if from a far distance, as Hermione and Ron exchange glances when they think the other isn’t watching; as Tom networks his way through the crowd, all razorblade edges and the caramel charm of a dancer; as Calcifer Lestrange loses himself in conversation with a bright-haired Ravenclaw girl.

He dreams that night of Tom’s eyes going red. He sees Lily’s silhouette, but when he reaches out to accept her hug, she peels away under his fingers, molting into nothingness like the shed skin of a snake. He sees the white breasts of the Mother, the Forbidden Forest burning behind her.

The tight, anxious lump in his stomach lingers. He struggles in his classes – the pixies in Care of Magical Creatures land bite after bite on his hands, his banishing charms are weak, and he can’t focus in Potions. The weekend should be a chance to breathe, but the free time feels like a tightening noose. He retreats to the library to read more about manticores – part of him longs for Tom to find him again and distract him, but Harry can’t even look at him lately without seeing his eyes gone red and the flesh bleached from his skull.

His Snape essay comes back bleeding with red ink, a bold ‘D’ inscribed at the top. He shoves it in his bag, hot with shame, and speaks in monosyllables all through Herbology. When Tom comes to fetch him for the ‘study group’ that evening, he abstains in favor of sitting in his room and staring, again, at the ceiling. He’s not used to feeling this yawning emptiness within him, not while he’s inside the walls of Hogwarts.

Death Star descends upon his head Wednesday morning at breakfast, bearing a pair of letters, one for Harry and one for Tom.

They’re from Lily; apparently Snape and Lupin had both mentioned how withdrawn Harry had been in class. He folds the letter very tightly and tucks it into the pocket of his jeans, feeling strange.

“Harry, what the hell? You said you got an Exceeds Expectations on that Dark Studies paper,” Tom hisses, looking up from his own letter.

Harry swallows. “I thought you could – could smell lies or some tripe.”

“Not if you won’t make eye contact – oh, never mind that. You lied to me, and you’ve been lying, and I don’t understand. I hadn’t taken you for a slacker.” Tom runs a hand through his dark hair, and Harry can’t look at him without seeing a figure unfolding from a cauldron, air damp with mist, his own throat raw with screams he was too terrified to voice. “Is this just because you’re spending all your time researching the manticore? Do you _realize_ how useless that is as a lead?”

“Why do you care, Tom? What does it matter to you what grades I earn? It’s not like Snape has ever given me anything above an Acceptable. He’s always hated me.”

“Harry – Snape doesn’t hate you. He literally went to go have tea with Lily specifically so he could ask her how best to support you and make sure you’re learning the material.”

Harry scoffs through a dry throat, pushing away his toast. “I’ve never been good at writing, and reading gives me migraines if I do it too long. I should tell Lily to lower her expectations a bit.”

“I don’t – you’re Henry. Henry _devours_ books. We’ve both seen him do it.” Daring to look up, he sees mingled incomprehension and fury on Tom’s pale face.

“I’m not Henry. I’ll never be Henry. Neither you nor Lily seem to realize that, but I – I’m twisted. I’m not kind, I’m not clever. I’m just… just Harry.”

He gets to his feet, but Tom grabs for his wrist. “How about this: if you put more effort into your classwork, I’ll help with the manticore investigation. I can think of a couple leads.”

‘ _I can touch him, now_ ,’ whispers a wraith in the back of Harry’s mind, but Tom’s long fingers at his wrist are warm. “Fine,” he says. “For Lily.”

***

“So, the first Hogsmeade weekend is this Saturday,” says Henry in Herbology, looking constipated.

“It… uh, it sure is,” says Tom. “Are you okay there, Henry?”

“Geoff and I always go to Hogsmeade together. We need an excuse to hang out, since we aren’t in the same House. It’s a sort of family tradition, yeah?”

“Mhm.”

“Well, if you want to come with us, feel free. That goes for you, too, Harry.”

“Thanks, Henry, that sounds brilliant. Right, Tom?”

“Quite,” Tom says, then, when Henry’s gone off to grab his gloves, says to Harry, “what’s up with him? Do _you_ have some kind of food allergy that makes you like that?”

Harry laughs. “He and the others are in distress because you’re better at this class than the lot of them combined.”

Tom tsks. “Now, that’s hardly their fault. Plants like me.”

“Plants don’t have brains. How can they like you?” Calcifer drops in.

Harry snickers. Tom tries for an enigmatic smile.

Sprout starts up the lesson and he comes to attention, more determined that ever to snap up the Ravenclaw ‘Triangle of Death’s’ points.

The rest of the day is productive. Lupin awards him ten points and a chunk of chocolate for his perfect transfiguration of a cushion into a bird of paradise. Harry manages to get Daphne to laugh over some ludicrous story about sneaking into the prefect’s bathroom. Tom gently coaxes Harry into getting a head start on his Dark Studies essay for the following Monday, and they spend a peaceful few hours in the library before Harry has to leave for Quidditch tryouts.

Tom eats dinner with Michael, who is far down on his list of recruitment priorities – but everyone else has gone with Susan to watch the tryouts, and none of Daphne’s group are at the stage yet where they’ll be ready to eat dinner with him.

He’s eating green beans, listening to Michael talk about his family’s horse, and trying not to look like he’s sulking when the rest of their year spills into the dining hall: tiny, triumphant Susan; unreadable Peryle; Calcifer with his hooded eyes and bright smile; Lyra and Pansy hand-in-hand. And then there’s Harry, hair damp, eyes bright, the others revolving around him.

“You didn’t tell us how talented he is, Tom!” says Calcifer. “Hogwarts hasn’t seen a flier like him in at least a decade. Those Ravenclaw fools had better pray for mercy.”

“I didn’t know you cared so much about Quidditch,” Tom says mildly, pausing to nibble on another bean.

Susan sinks onto the bench across from him. “We don’t need to care about sports to know that Harry’s a fucking artist in the air. Or to care about all the points he’s going to win us.”

“We don’t even know if I’m on the team yet,” Harry says. He still looks tired, but so much more alive than he had the past week.

Susan snorts. “Harry, dear, modesty doesn’t work when you’re that good.”

***

Hogsmeade with the Potter brothers feels like a slice of summer. Tom is surprised by how much he missed Geoffrey’s particular brand of joy, or Henry’s un-constipated face. Things are more tense than they had been before Tom and Harry’s Sorting, but Henry is too good-natured to really hold a grudge over something like Herbology.

The others talk about Quidditch, mostly – Harry had found out yesterday afternoon that he earned the Seeker position, while Geoff has finally made Gryffindor Beater and is over the moon with excitement.

“You’re both going down,” Henry tells them solemnly, but Tom can tell he’s as excited as Geoffrey is about the whole thing.

“Tom, we should resume our lessons, huh?” Harry says. “I reckon you could be Keeper, you’re so tall.”

“Have you been practicing your hair magic?”

Harry tugs on a wooly bit of hair and scowls. “I’ve been distracted.”

He really has been, the last two weeks. Tom can’t pry, not with Henry and Geoff listening in, but he badly wants to.

They go to Zonko’s first, a bright orange eyesore in the middle of the street.

“This used to be a perfume shop,” Tom says mournfully. “Why would they paint it that color?”

Harry drags him inside, and Tom is subjected to about a minute of cackling schoolchildren, loud bangs, and smells that would make poor Mrs. Trufflepot, who had run the perfume store, turn in her grave.

A firework hurtling right at his face, then veering at the last second and setting a shelf of merchandise on fire is the last straw. “I’m going to wait outside,” he tells Harry over the ensuing delighted screams.

Harry follows him out into the sunlight. “I’d forgotten how loud it is in there.”

“But you’ve never gone in there. Because it used to be a perfume shop,” Tom reminds him.

“Ah yes. Back in the day, I would often frequent the, er, perfume shop. For my perfumes.”

“Don’t make fun. I always liked the lavender scent Mrs. Trufflepot sold – apparently it had Muggle-repellant charms built in, but the smell was nice. Gideon bought me a vial of it for Yule one year.”

“You wore perfume?”

“Only for special occasions – oh, don’t give me that look. You know wizards don’t hold to the same gendered expectations as Muggles do for stuff like that. We’re all allowed to smell good if we like.”

Soon Henry and Geoff wander out of Zonko’s, Geoff laden with Dungbombs and fireworks and Henry with empty hands stuck in his pockets.

Henry pulls them all off to Honeydukes, which is just as crowded as Zonko’s but much calmer. “Dad gave you both an allowance, right?” Henry asks, frowning into his own money sack.

“Yeah,” Harry says, already wandering off to a rack of sugar quills of varied flavors.

“I, er,” says Henry, not looking at Tom. “I’ve been a bit of a jerk to you, haven’t I? I’m sorry, the rivalry is a bit – easy to get swept up in, sometimes.”

“You and Geoffrey are very good at apologizing,” Tom says, thinking of Geoff and Harry baking pumpkin bread in the haze of late July.

“It’s how Mum raised us – we’re allowed to fight, but we have to talk it through afterwards, hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes.”

Harry would have benefited from that kind of thing, Tom thinks, remembering the long month of silences and Harry’s distance since they’ve returned to school. “Where did the rivalry come from, anyway? It’s more intense than I had expected. When I was in school before, our biggest rivals were always the Gryffindors.”

Henry wanders over to the sugared quills, considering an orange-flavored one with interest. “I’ve always heard the story from Ron, so my impression of the matter is very Weasley-centric. This generation of Weasleys have run Hogwarts for years, though – I mean, you know, you have to deal with George – so I don’t think it’s actually too inaccurate.”

“Ron did mention he has two older brothers I haven’t gotten to meet.”

“Yeah: Bill and Charlie. Both brilliant in the classroom, both Quidditch geniuses, just a year apart, like Geoff and I. Bill went to Slytherin, Charlie went to Ravenclaw. I think they were pretty chill about it for the first couple of years, but by the time Charlie was thirteen they had their teams caught up in a heated Quidditch rivalry. And then the academic stuff followed – and you know Ron, how charismatic he is. His brothers are the same way, but with Percy’s drive.”

“So a lot like the twins?”

“Yeah, I suppose so. But the twins are fucking insane. Just, completely off their collective rocker. You don’t know them too well yet, but. I’m a bit concerned they’ll destroy the world after they get let out of Hogwarts.”

Tom thinks of George Weasley and his flame-red hair, lounging on that one armchair in the common room that every Slytherin covets, the light of the lake washing his pale face into shadowy green.

“Their Sorting made the whole rivalry a lot more intense, actually. They’re in different Houses, but they’re still completely inseparable; they feed on the chaos of the rivalry. Draco and I are convinced they’ve engineered most of the inter-House conflict so they can sell their inventions to both sides. They’re juvenile war profiteers.”

“You all make my old time seem so boring,” Tom says, eying a display of fine-spun chocolate bird’s nests and formulating new plans to ingratiate himself with the current seventh years.

Henry laughs and makes for the cash register with his orange sugar quill. Tom buys nothing; he’s still not quite sure what to make of having an allowance, and saving it seems like the most prudent course of action for the time being.

They meet up with Harry and Geoff outside and make for the Three Broomsticks, Henry and Harry laughing over having bought the same confections. Geoff tells Tom about how he and Damocles had managed to explode a potion all over Slughorn that had made his eyebrows grow all the way to his knees before he got things under control.

There’s a fuzzing joy in Tom’s core that has nothing to do with Butterbeer, and he’s baffled by himself yet again, that these ridiculous people have sparked something in him that no one in his old world had ever managed. He’s dizzyingly glad that he’d taken Harry’s hand, all those months ago.

***

“Harry Partridge! We’ve been looking for you! Centipede won’t play, it’s been waiting to give you your prize,” says a little boy with bright eyes and a snub nose. “That was quite the record, by the way.”

It’s early Sunday morning, and the only people other than them up are a couple of fourth years frowning over a chess game in the corner. “Er, thanks.” Harry says, following the boy over to the little arcade.

The Centipede game flashes demandingly, displaying ‘HIGH SCORES: SEPTEMBER,’ with ‘HARRY P.’ highlighted at the top. “Just put your hand on the joystick here and it should spit your prize straight out.”

“September’s not over yet,” Harry says, palming the stick.

“This game awards prizes on the 23rd. Pacman does it on the 5th of each month.” The boy shrugs. “We don’t question the machines.”

On the screen, the high scores disappear and the forest returns, centipede coiled at the top. It opens its mouth and something falls out, rolling through the glass covering and onto the common room floor. Harry picks it up. “A finger puppet?” It appears to be a little silvery dinosaur, bug-eyed and spiky. He puts it over his thumb, and it blinks and sneezes a little gout of flame.

“Neat,” says the boy, leaning close to the puppet. “Tell you what, I’ll give you five tokens for it.”

He seems enthralled. “Why not?” Harry says generously, popping the dinosaur off his thumb and exchanging it for five grubby wooden tokens.

The boy scarpers, leaving Harry to continue struggling through a nasty book on potions ingredient acquisition that Tom told him to read for his Dark Studies essay – which is due tomorrow. Crap.

The light in the room shifts. Harry puts the book down in favor of staring out at the lake, watching the shadows of fish make their ways through the murk.

“Working hard, I see.”

“Good morning, Tom. I’m just… taking a break to look for merfolk.”

Tom settles down on his sofa. “Liar.”

“You said before that you might have a lead on the manticore thing, right?”

He sighs. “Fine. We’ll go check it out. But afterwards, you are doing your homework, and I am reading over your homework, and then you are redoing your homework. Okay?”

“Is Lily threatening you, or bribing you?”

“Threatening. I’m not doing this because of her, though.” Tom scowls. “It would not do for me to associate with a _slacker_.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

He shrugs. “Go change into clothes, Harry. My lead involves going outdoors.”

Harry, grumbling under his breath, heads back his room to change out of pajamas, careful not to wake a slumbering Michael.

They have a quick breakfast, then wander outside.

“Your lead is in the Forest?” Harry guesses. The summer is slipping away, leaving them with a gray sky and a chill to the wind.

“You’ve been researching manticores to try and identify our perpetrator. What have you learned from that?”

“Just that an animal that big would need a lot of meat to keep it going and that they’re really hard to tame,” Harry admits. It’s not a lot of information, not considering how he’s spent the last three weeks researching the problem.

“So, we can guess that the rider is wealthy, and that they maybe have some sort of affinity for cats. Doesn’t exactly narrow it down, does it? No, we need to focus on motive first. It’s dangerous and illegal to kill oaks; chances are they sold the corpses and got rich off the whole ordeal.”

“Well, yeah. But we knew that.”

“Harry, when you sell things like that they don’t just disappear. They change the market. They’re traceable.”

They pass by the space where Hagrid’s hut should have been, giving themselves up to the yawning abyss of the woods. Harry feels it instantly, now, the pulsing of the oaks’ song, vibrating up through his boots and echoing in the sound of leaves rustling far above. “Are we going to the oaks, Tom? Perhaps they’ll know something –”

“Not this time,” Tom says, a muscle in his jaw tightening. “No, today we’re going to the Dark Market. If anyone can tell us about fluctuations in the price of ancient oak parts, it’ll be the hags.”

“The _hags_?”

“Oh, yes, a whole colony of them live in the forest… they serve as supervisors for the Market.” Seeming to pick up on Harry confusion, he says, “think Knockturn Alley, but humans aren’t the primary customers. It’s a gathering place and center of commerce for all kinds of Dark creatures. And Dark wizards, of course, but those tend to stick to human places whenever possible.”

Tom leads Harry through the trees in a seemingly random direction, but as they move deeper into the Forest he realizes they’re on a path. The sides of a ravine grow up around them, deepening the shadows, and the plant life snarling the ground off the path is twisted and black. When Harry reaches up to touch a thorny briar, Tom grabs him by the wrist and increases their pace, muttering about ‘poison’ and ‘idiots.’

As they continue, there’s a subtle shift to the air. Harry can’t sense the oaks’ song any longer; instead he hears snatches of muffled sounds, the murmuring of a crowd, a soft clicking like distant metal colliding. He thinks he can smell woodsmoke, just faintly, on the breeze.

Tom stops. “Hello?” he calls to the shrouded path before them, and Harry sees a figure there, emerging from the darkness.

“Hogwarts students aren’t welcome here. I don’t care who your daddy is,” says the patch of darkness. “Go home, little ones, or I’ll be adding some fresh new samples to my human toenail collection.”

“My name is Tom Riddle. I was born in the year 1926. I think your mistress will not mind my presence in her Market.”

“Are you here to buy or sell?”

“We are here to trade in information.”

Silence from whatever lurks in the path before them. Harry feels as though the centipede from the Slytherin arcade has crawled down his back, spined and monstrous.

“ _Spooky scary snake noise_ ,” Tom hisses. “ _I can’t tell if you’re scared because I can’t see your face, so I’m just going to keep_ –”

“Enough! I’ll take you to the mistress, Parselmouth. But your friend must return to the castle.”

“ _More spooky snake noises_ ,” Harry tries.

Tom jumps. “Christ, I forgot you could do that, too,” he mutters. “That’s a bit embarrassing.”

“Two Parselmouths,” the figure says with a nervous cackle. “I pity the inhabitants of your ridiculous school. Follow me, sirs…”

Their mysterious guide seems to be a hag, judging by her long, warty nose. She guides them to a narrow tunnel off the path, which Harry finds highly suspect but Tom seems fine with ducking into. They delve deep under the earth, now entirely swathed in darkness.

“Harry,” Tom eventually says after Harry hears him stumble over something in the passageway, “the courteous thing to do here is to cast a _Lumos_. She might have dark vision, but we most certainly do _not_.”

Harry considers not doing it – listening to Tom curse after his near fall had been really excellent entertainment – but the hag has completely vanished, and they will need the light if they want to move forward with anything resembling speed.

They come out into a deep gorge, perhaps carved by some long-dried river. The gray sky looms over them from high, high above the walls of the natural structure. Within the earthy walls, there is chaos. Merchants sell everything from produce to thestral eyes, calling out prices from behind brightly colored booths. Fireflies flicker overhead, dispelling the forest’s gloom.

The rising and falling clamor of the crowd echoes off the gorge walls, and Harry sees more hags, a handful of centaurs, and some people with a green cast to their skin. Most of the Market patrons, however, seem to be human. A child wrestles with an enormous toad, snarling and kicking playfully. _Werewolves_ , Harry realizes.

“It’s beautiful,” he says. “I had no idea.”

Tom smiles, eyes dark and face half-lit by fireflies, and Harry feels something inflate in his lungs, raw and hopeful. _I had no idea_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look it's a [tumblr](https://relic--crown.tumblr.com/)
> 
> i'll be using it for art and chapter updates, methinks  
> 🦢


	10. Snowfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom follow a lead on the identity of the manticore's rider. As time passes, the Slytherin of 1995 begins to feel like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was beta'd by the incomparable [TreeDaddyD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreeDaddyD/pseuds/TreeDaddyD)!

The hags’ mistress surveys the Dark Market from her wooden tower, a leaning structure built into the stone wall of the gorge. She turns as Tom clambers up the stairs, ducking into her room. “Tom! Is that really you? The centaurs have been whispering, but I hardly believed them – yet here you are. It’s good to see you, my boy.”

Fireflies bob out the window behind her, matched by candles lit around the richly furnished room.

“Mistress Agatha,” he says as he bows to kiss one of the fine diamond rings on her warty fingers. “I wish I could tell you I’ve been productive in my long absence, but the time rather slipped away from me.”

She cackles and pats his face fondly. “Time is a cruel sovereign, is she not?” And it’s true. Her grin is missing more teeth than he remembers; her face is consumed by wrinkles. “I’m glad you decided to show up before I finally croaked, boy.”

“As am I,” Tom says warmly. “But I’m afraid we’re not here on a social call – oh, Agatha, you haven’t met Harry!”

Agatha squints at Harry, who stands taller, blinking. Tom really does need to force some hair magic through his thick skull, _honestly_ , his hair is in even more disarray than usual from their wander through the woods. “Oh, you poor thing. Centaurs told me about you. Nasty business, that,” she says. “At least you’ve got Tom looking out for you now, hmm?” She squeezes Tom’s bicep.

“Er,” Harry says.

“Ah, not the sharpest knife in the bunch, is he? Well, that’s to be expected of a male prophecy child – though normally they get some muscle to compensate,” she confides in Tom, who tosses a secretive smirk Harry’s way.

“He’s good with a wand,” Tom says.

Agatha snorts. “ _Is_ he now? Well, that’s one reason to keep him around, I suppose.”

Harry, toeing absently at the purple Persian carpet under his feet, does not appear to comprehend the innuendo. Tom feels his ears heat.

“Now, if you’re not here for me, what brings you to my Market?”

Tom clears his throat. “We, ah. We have reason to believe there might be an influx of materials derived from ancient white oaks coming onto the market.”

“ _Ancient white oaks?_ What have you been up to, Tom?”

“I’m guessing they sold overseas…?”

“This is dangerous business even by your standards – no, I haven’t heard anything about an _oak being killed_ , even on global markets. But there are dangerous forces afoot, things that have bubbled to the surface in your absence. I’ll watch out for oak parts. You watch your back, though – better, watch each other’s backs.”

“Of course, mistress. It’s good to see your face again.”

“Only you could say that without laughing, boy! I’ve missed you. Do come by and see me again soon, dearie!”

As they exit the tunnel and find themselves returned to the near-silence of the Forest, Harry says, “that wasn’t terribly helpful, was it? We’re even more lost now than we were before.”

“No,” Tom says, “no, I don’t think we are. Now we can start asking the right questions. If the manticore’s rider didn’t kill the oaks to sell them, then what _was_ their motive?”

Harry bites his lip, falling silent for a moment. “What are oak parts used for?”

“Mostly potions: the bark, powdered, greatly enhances the strength of most brews. There’re rumors that the roots are a primary ingredient for a sort of pseudo-elixir of life, but I’m pretty sure that story’s false.”

“Well, they didn’t take the roots,” Harry says. “So, what, we’re looking for a crazy potions fanatic? Who’s also rich and likes cats?”

“They have a third use,” Tom says slowly, feeling his palms begin to sweat. “The trees are ancient. They have some of the strongest souls in all magical lore. A soul that strong – they linger in the heartwood after the death of the tree. They can be… reanimated, perhaps, though that’s the wrong word for it. Hasn’t been done since Arthurian times, as far as I can tell. The trees told me about it, said they’re destined to leave their roots behind when the forest faces destruction. To fight again, as they did for the druids of old.”

“Tom, what the fuck – why didn’t you – _what the fuck_. So, you think someone’s out there building, what, like an army of trees?”

“No, I don’t – I didn’t mention it before because it hardly seemed relevant. As far as I know, I’m the only person alive who knows about it. Just me and some old Welsh texts that the Muggles think are just legends.”

“Yeah, okay, great. Tom, while it’s been fun going on field trips to meet your spooky forest friends, we’re not really getting anywhere. Can we just go talk to the oaks? They’re –” he says, gesturing in frustration, foot tapping to a beat Tom can’t hear. In the next moment, though, Tom feels the song, too. It pulls at him, tugging him toward the true heart of the woods.

Dread pools in his stomach – he doesn’t want to face the oaks of the Dark Forest, doesn’t want to admit his failure to protect their siblings in the birch wood – but the rhythm of this forest is stronger. He nods tightly, turning off the well-traveled path to the Market and guiding Harry deeper into the thorny shadows.

*** 

Tom has missed his oaks.

Dozens upon dozens of them stand grand atop their hill, the world thrumming with their majesty. They’re yellow in the autumn, catching the sun and throwing shadows like minnows onto the grassy floor of the grove. Tom joins their song, high and clear, and Harry’s fingers tap against his thigh, flickering in time to the beat. The music is a physical force. Tom is alive with it, feeling drunk and Dark and magical. The minds of the oaks press against his, golden as their leaves, and he feels the headiness of it seep from the pads of his feet to his temples.

He’d never conceived he might bring someone else to this place. He’d never conceived someone else might learn to hear the song, though.

A standing stone like the ones moldering in the Potters’ woods sprouts out of the ground in their midst, clean of moss, the runes untouched by time.

Harry says something. The air, already too laden with its weight of music, can’t hold his voice, and Tom doesn’t hear. He sits, instead, in the shadow of the stone. Harry comes to sit beside him, and Tom closes his eyes and lets go.

The song splinters until he can pick out individual trees. The Lichen-Streaked One recognizes him first, and then the others in a wave, until Tom can hardly breathe through their combined _joy_ and _welcome home, small one_. And then, in a wave again, _so thirsty_ and _who’s this?_ and _you smell of brethren_.

Tom inhales with intentionality, then projects the ache in his hand, Harry’s true face, the grove at the Potters’, the stink of failure. He balls his hands in his lap, braces himself for the sting of their anger.

A beat of silence. The leaves overhead whisper wordlessly. Then _forgiveness_ and also _fury_ and _anguish_ and _revenge_ and then, _bleed them dry, small one_.

Tom exhales, breathing relief and a question out into the air – why had the murderer come that day in late July? Why would someone kill their brethren?

Leaves stir. Tom sinks deeper into his trance, letting the oaks weave a tapestry of vibrating thoughts, waiting for their answer to become clear –

Harry gasps, startling him out of his concentration. “I felt them. In my mind. How –”

“That’s normal. Hush.”

But his concentration is gone; the oaks seem more concerned with Harry than Tom’s questions. Tom stretches his mind, sensing the web of the trees’ thoughts, Harry’s mind a blot like a spider in the middle, half-invisible. He reaches out, plucking a string in the tapestry, feels the attention of the blot shift toward him.

 _I see you_ , something murmurs in his mind, unfamiliar and known all at once.

 _Harry?_ He reaches out, in the midst of the oaks’ song cresting, and their minds touch.

Tom tastes wonder and fear before the other mind retreats.

Something taps his shoulder. He forces his eyes open to see Harry’s face, his falsely gray eyes magnified by thick glasses.

“I think I need a break,” Harry says through the melody shimmering on the air.

“Right,” Tom says, blinking hard. The sun hovers at either nine o’clock or three o’clock. He can’t tell if it’s afternoon or morning.

Their ‘break’ turns into just heading back to the castle. Tom’s stomach lets him know in no uncertain terms that it _is_ afternoon, and he really should have thought to eat a larger breakfast if he was going to stay out this long past lunchtime.

They pick leaves out of each other’s hair and stumble into the common room, finding themselves in the middle of a boisterous auction.

“I’ll do fifty,” calls a sixth-year girl.

“Fifty-two!”

“Uh, fifty-three.”

“Sixty!”

“Hey, that’s my – my _thing_ ,” says Harry, pointing to the object being auctioned.

What _is_ it? A tiny thumb-dinosaur. How strange. It lets out a tiny jet of flames. A weapon of some kind? A lighter?

“I think I may have been ripped off by a small child this morning,” Harry continues, not really sounding all that perturbed. “Ah, well. Hey, Pansy! I’ve got your tokens!”

*** 

Fall descends on Hogwarts before long. 

Soon, Tom is carrying his umbrella with him on Mondays and Wednesdays so he doesn’t get wet on the way to the greenhouses. Harry laughs at him – _Are you a wizard or not?_ – but he knows full well that Tom has trouble with the kinds of charms most students use for rain protection. 

Besides, Tom likes his umbrella. Simon had given it to him for Yule one year, when Tom had asked for ‘something practical.’ The spike on the end is just pointy enough for Tom to consider it a good murder weapon, but not sharp enough to actually make his housemates nervous.

They make no more progress on the case of the oak murderer, but that doesn’t seem quite so important with everything else going on. Tom keeps himself busy networking with the Slytherin upper years and making friends among Henry’s Ravenclaws. 

On one particularly homesick night, he drops by the Room of Hidden Things. There, he finds a grouchy little radio that plays exclusively old jazz songs. It reminds Tom of dancing with Orion, and Simon’s imitation American accent, and long nights spent watching the shifting darkness of the lake outside the windows. The memories seem like details from another life, sometimes; in other moments, they seem close enough to touch, so _present_ that he’s surprised to turn his head to see a sleeping Calcifer, or to go to Defense and see Longbottom rather than Merrythought.

Harry seems to spend half his time out on the Quidditch pitch. His teammates keep telling the common room as a whole that, “we’ve got it in the bag, folks. For real this time. Henry Potter can’t hold a candle.” 

Everyone’s in an uproar over the arcades again, too – Tom interrogates Harry and discovers he had snuck down in the middle of the night and managed a high score on each of the machines, using three tokens someone called ‘MacNair’ had given him. 

“It _was_ five,” Harry amends. “Imagine. Well, this is my revenge!” Tom, not quite sure what is going on but approving of revenge, pats Harry on the back and moves on with his life.

Though he and Susan are still officially at a truce, the rest of their year starts busily restructuring themselves in preparation for the coming storm. Tom secures coded promises of loyalty from Pansy, Michael, and Justin Finch-Fletchley, one of Daphne’s people. Lyra, to his surprise, stays neutral, while Daphne watches the proceedings with tight lips and ice in her eyes. Only Eliza Dearborn stays loyal to Greengrass, but that’s because she’s hopelessly in love with her. And Tom has Calcifer, of course. And Harry, but Harry seems hardly to notice the tides moving around him.

Tom continues coaching Harry on his schoolwork, and for all his grumbling, Harry does improve. A week into October, Slughorn pulls Harry aside privately to compliment his essay on the uses of Polyjuice Potion. Lupin awards Slytherin five points for his skillful transfiguration of a globule of clay into three perfectly-formed spiders. Even Snape, for all his sternness, offers him a smile and a rare O for his work on a paper detailing the effects of the Unforgiveables, just a week after Slughorn’s beaming compliment.

“I take full credit,” Tom says smugly, reading over Snape’s cramped red comments afterwards. They’re in Harry’s room – both of the common rooms have people in them, and they’re really not in the mood. 

Harry gets a worried letter from Lily the next morning, though: apparently Snape has informed her he is almost certain Harry has been subjected to both the Cruciatus and Imperius curses, and completely certain he has witnessed the _Avada_.

“Oops,” Harry says.

Tom shrugs. “The alternative is to deliberately underperform, and we can’t have that. Besides, I think Lily and James told all their friends about your past. This shouldn’t have been news to anyone.”

Harry taps the letter. “It’s news to Lily. The Unspeakables didn’t tell them shit before they handed us over.”

But Snape is kind to Harry from then on, and the two of them have tea together that Saturday. Harry has to rush to the little meeting after a rather unpleasant encounter with a wild boar – he and Tom had just returned from what had become weekly visits to the oaks.

He comes back from his tea with Snape seemingly lost in thought. “He used to be a monster, you know. He was the Potions teacher. I hated him.” Later, Tom writes this down in his diary, the latest addition to his list of Things About Harry.

Halloween arrives with great fanfare. The ghosts seem especially chatty; over a rich breakfast, Tom becomes so lost in a conversation with the Bloody Baron that he’s almost late for Defense.

“Longbottom promised a ‘delightfully spooky’ lesson today, remember? Can’t miss that,” Calcifer says, dragging him off. “Ah – terribly sorry, Baron sir, but we’ve class – yeah, I’m sure he’ll be glad to talk over lunch, right, Tom?”

The dragon skeleton hanging high above the class has been decorated with candles. Hot drops of wax fall, transfiguring themselves into flower petals before they touch the ground. Calcifer quirks a smile up at the ceiling; Tom himself thinks the conjured greenery quite ruins the ambiance.

It’s Tuesday, so Tom knows to expect some sort of practical. Harry is already in the classroom, talking with Professor Longbottom. He nods in Tom and Calcifer’s direction before returning to his conversation.

The rest of the class eventually arrives. Justin stands next to Tom and says something excitable that he completely ignores. Lyra and Theodore Nott come in together, looking very serious, then split up. Lyra comes over to sit next to Calcifer.

As Daphne finally shows up, Eliza in her wake, Longbottom shoos Harry away and starts the lesson. “Halloween is the best time of year for the practice of soul magic,” she says. “Now, there’s certainly no soul magic on the curriculum. However, we can get close: today’s subject will be the Patronus Charm. Who can tell me what a Patronus is?”

Theodore answers, “it’s an extension of your soul in the form of an animal.”

“Good start – the Patronus is not, in fact, an extension of the soul, but rather a representation of your happiest memory. Like I said, it’s not actually soul magic, but it’s similar in the mental processes used to create it. Can someone tell me the uses of a Patronus?”

Lyra now: “it scares away dementors and some other Dark creatures. And it can serve as a messenger.”

“Perfect. Now, a one hour-long session isn’t going to be enough to teach any one of you how to cast this spell. The Patronus is very high-level. However, it’s also exceptionally useful. This class period will be spent teaching you all _how to learn_ the Patronus, more than how to cast it. Those dedicated among you might take those lessons and practice them in the coming months, and maybe, by this time next year, you’ll have managed to produce one. Maybe.”

Harry stands quietly, hands in his pockets, showing no sign of his capabilities.

“The incantation is _Expecto Patronum_. You’ll want to channel as much magic as possible through your wand while holding your happiest memory in your thoughts. Like so: _Expecto Patronum_!” A great silvery lioness pours from the tip of her wand, raising its head proudly. “I think of my son to conjure her. The animal is a representation of feelings of pride and protectiveness.”

There is a chorus of ‘awws.’ Tom rolls his eyes, irritable.

“Now, have at it! Practice the wand movement, practice channeling a lot of magic at once. The real key, though, is the memory.”

“Not exactly ‘delightfully spooky,’ now is it?” Tom says to Calcifer, half-heartedly mimicking Longbottom’s demonstrated wand movement.

Calcifer grins. “What could be spookier than happiness? Fear of the unknown, right?”

Harry wanders over.

“You’re not going to cast yours?” Tom asks.

“Seems like it would be showing off, don’t you think?”

Calcifer blinks. “Harry, I didn’t know you could cast a Patronus. Merlin, that’s impressive. Look, you’re among Slytherins. We’re the last people to judge anyone negatively for a display of competence. Go on, then.”

“In that case,” Harry says, grin askew, hair falling in his eyes, “ _Expecto Patronum_.”

The stag is as magnificent as Tom remembers from that desperate summer afternoon in the birch wood.

“Oh, magnificent!” says Professor Longbottom. “How long have you been able to produce a Patronus, Mister Partridge?”

“Since third year,” Harry says, dispelling the stag with a touch to its nose.

“Marvelous. Can you confide in us what memory you use, to give everyone another example of what to think of?”

“My parents,” he says shortly, and everyone goes rather silent and still, perhaps thinking of how Harry has been orphaned by time. It’s funny to know that the opposite is true.

Everyone disperses, going back to muttering to themselves or swirling their wands or, in Lyra’s case, drawing.

“I’m having trouble coming up with the right memory.” Calcifer drops to the floor, scowling. “I keep thinking of things, but then I just know that they aren’t right. Not enough.”

Tom settles down beside him. “It seems like both Longbottom and Harry used the thought of loved ones to conjure theirs.”

Calcifer sighs. “I don’t have anyone I love that much, I don’t think.”

“Not Lyra?”

“I – I do love her. It’s just hard sometimes. We’re probably going to end up married, you know, and that – well, we both came to peace with it years ago. But it’ll be hard. We’ll have to start having children as quickly as possible, so they can lock me away without any real qualms after I start showing signs of the blood madness.”

“I didn’t realize,” Tom says woodenly. How… illuminating. Good god.

Calcifer picks at the hem of his robe, tearing out a loose thread and watching it unravel, then fixing the damage with a whispered spell. “Maybe I’ll be a gentle madman. I think my mother’s father was one of those. They just didn’t let him out in public. Left him to rot away in his libraries.” He lets out a humorless laugh. “But chances are I’ll be like my mother. Kill Lyra with my own bare hands. She didn’t even use her wand – can you imagine?”

“If I know anything about the Blacks and Lestranges, it’s that you burn as bright as you do fast,” Tom says. “And I’d be glad to have you at my side for however long I can.”

Calcifer, dry-eyed, traces his fingers against the wood grain of the floorboards as wax-drop petals fall onto his shoulders and hair.

***

Harry wins them the first Quidditch match of the year in seven minutes flat. The party in the dungeons is wilder than anything he’d experienced in Gryffindor – it turns out the Slytherins are a lot less deterred by the possibility of being caught with Firewhiskey. At the first given opportunity, he slips away to their year’s smaller common space – then abruptly backpedals.

“Er, hi,” he says.

Pansy, sitting _very_ close to a beet-red Michael, blinks crossly up at him. 

“Did you need something, Partridge?” she asks.

Harry edges back towards the door. “Just looking for Tom. Er, Michael, you all right, mate?”

“Very… very all right. I think Tom’s in his room, if you’d mind just –”

Harry ducks out, trying not to look like he’s fleeing.

He indeed finds Tom in his room, sprawled out on his bed inking an essay.

“Got tired of your adoring fans?” he asks as Harry lets himself in.

Harry mimes vomiting. Tom hums, brown eyes distant. “Are you okay? You seem out of sorts.”

“It was just a bit of a shock to play against Cedric Diggory again, is all.”

“What, the Head Boy?” Tom’s brow furrows, then smooths. “Oh, I remember. He was the one who you watched die.”

Harry’s breathing suddenly feels tight again as it had on the Quidditch pitch, meeting Cedric’s gray eyes and seeing him falling, _falling_ , the curse landing on his chest and lighting him up like a green lantern, a lit wand in a vat of frogspawn. And Voldemort’s high, cruel voice, the terrible face of his fetal body –

Harry feels the echo of his heartbeat in his fingertips. “Tom. _How do you know about that_?”

Tom inspects his fingernails. “I’m a Legilimens. I know about a lot of things.”

“Legilimens?”

“I read minds.”

“You never thought to tell me? Tom, what the fuck! You can’t just say that like it’s obvious.”

“I thought you knew! All those comments about me being able to ‘sniff out lies’ – anyway, it’s not like I’ve been able to get anything off you since we first met. The un-speak seal hides your thoughts.”

Harry had known, perhaps, that Voldemort could read minds, but he hadn’t suspected that he might have had the talent since his school years. He eyes Tom warily. ‘ _I know about a lot of things_.’ Honestly. “You’re such a creepy person. I suppose I should have figured that out when I learned your best friends are hags and unicorns.”

“I feel like the unicorn thing is actually a commendation of my character,” Tom screws shut his bottle of ink, putting the essay aside. “And Legilimency is a very common skill among strongly Dark magicals. I mean, it’s just mind magic. I developed it when I was nine or ten years old, and could use it with intentionality by twelve.”

“I didn’t realize _mind reading_ was a _common skill_ ,” Harry says with no small amount of horror.

“It’s as common as very Dark magicals – which means it’s actually extremely rare. You don’t have to be too worried, anyways. It’s like I said, the un-speak seal protects you.”

“Well, isn’t that a relief,” Harry says sarcastically. “It’s just everyone _else’s_ thoughts that you’re peering into.”

Tom frowns. “I try to avoid it whenever possible. Our classmates spend a shocking amount of time thinking about their tragic backstories and entertaining romantic fantasies about each other. Their minds are hardly comfortable places to spend time.”

“Tom, just the fact that you know those things about them strikes me as incredibly invasive,” Harry plops down on Calcifer’s perfectly made bed.

“It’s not like it’s something I can just turn off,” Tom says, blinking.

Harry needs to think about this a bit more somewhere where he can’t feel the weight of Tom’s eyes on his back. 

Speaking of romantic fantasies, though – “so, I just came across Pansy and Michael…”

***

Halfway into November, Harry makes a hair magic breakthrough. He’s having a friendly little duel with Lyra, who likes tossing stinging curses at him just to see him contort to dodge. He retaliates half on instinct, unformed magic like Tom had explained, and Lyra’s hair goes a shocking blue to match her eyes. She doesn’t notice at first, at least not until Pansy does.

“Oh, Harry, really, don’t you think that was a bit juvenile?” she asks, pulling desolately at a robin’s egg curl. “Don’t worry, I’ve got the countercurse – oh dear, that isn’t working. Partridge, what did you _do_?”

“It was an accident… sorry, Lyra,” Harry says, undoing the magic and biting his lip to hold in his delight.

The next time he sees Tom, Harry turns his hair the pinkish-purple of a sunset. It stays that way through all of Dark Studies and Potions before anyone thinks to tell him, and Tom comes to Harry for help getting his hair back to normal and is irritated at the whole mess, but very pleased with Harry's progress.

He grins down at Harry, dark hair restored, and says, “next up, taming your bird's nest.”

Harry laughs and tries to turn Tom’s hair curly in retribution, but can’t do more than ruffle it.

“Oh, go bother someone who deserves it,” Tom says, carefully fixing his hair. “Greengrass, for instance.”

“Oh, did she think something unflattering at you again?”

Tom’s silence is answer enough. 

The next day, Daphne finds herself with a head of Weasley-red hair – at least until she manages to squeeze out of Lyra that Harry’s the only one who can undo it. He graciously returns her hair to its usual pallor, but Daphne holds a grudge for days. She tries twice to get him back, but underestimates Harry’s watchfulness.

That weekend he turns Pansy’s hair green, to her abject horror, and Tom steps in to undo it himself. “Harry, I think you’re ready to try something more advanced, don’t you think? Look, you’ve gone and inspired the third years.”

Harry follows Tom’s gaze to the third years, who do seem more colorful than usual.

“Juvenile,” Pansy agrees, pulling her hair up into a stern ponytail.

The third years have, since Harry reasserted his arcade dominance and snagged three new finger puppets, taken on a sort of hero worship of the ‘mysterious time-traveling Partridge boy’. He doesn’t normally care for hero worship, but it feels more genuine somehow when it comes from Slytherins.

He tries to curl Tom’s hair again, and this time it works. “What did you do?” Tom pats his head quizzically.

“Doesn’t look half-bad,” Pansy says, appreciative. “He sort of… enhanced that natural wave you’ve got going, Tom, don’t get in a tizzy.”

Harry does the same thing to _her_ hair and she screams.

*** 

That weekend, winter falls fully upon the castle, swaddling the grounds in a foot of fluffy snow. The Slytherins, down in the dungeons, first see the snow when they come up for breakfast to find illusory flakes drifting down from the ceiling. They’re just breaking out the last of Justin’s Muggle candy, left over from Halloween, when Geoff, Ron, Neville, and Damocles wander over from the Gryffindor table to see them.

“Oh, I haven’t had a Mars Bar in ages,” Geoff says, pilfering one from Tom’s stash. Tom turns his hair violently purple in revenge.

“Not you, too, Riddle, I thought you were above that sort of thing,” says Pansy, but laughs right alongside Harry.

Neville, rolling his eyes, has to be the one to attempt the countercurse, which doesn’t work.

“Anyway,” Geoff says, apparently undeterred by his newly eye-catching hair. “We’re going to go out and do snow stuff. Consider yourselves invited.”

“Snow stuff?” Pansy says.

“Well, _I’m_ certainly going,” says Lyra, and that settles it.

The Slytherin fifth years – other than Daphne, Eliza, and Theo – all wrap themselves up in wool and spill out onto the grounds, where the Weasley twins have already organized quite the impressive snowball fight.

“Do you all want to join in?” Harry says, but most of his Housemates seem distinctly uninterested in getting cold and wet.

He’s just managed to snare Lyra and Justin when Tom says idly, “I think I’d like to build a snow fort. I’ve never tried that with magic before,” and even Harry has to admit that sounds leagues more fun than the twins’ snowball fight.

They go find a nice hill, untouched by human footprints with a lovely view of the castle. Tom sets about telling everyone what to do, while he conjures himself a leather chair and sends warming charms at anyone looking cold – and stinging charms at anyone looking mutinous.

While Tom debates proper floor plans with Pansy, Susan directs everyone on an individual level. She puts Harry in charge of making snow bricks for the walls, which is unglamorous and magic intensive. He’s surprised, after a couple of minutes, to look up and see what appears to be his own sopping wet reflection.

“Oh, hello there, Henry. Lost the snowball fight?”

“Let myself lose,” Henry says happily. “I couldn’t just surrender – there’s no honor in that! – but I really wanted to work on this instead of slowly destroying Luis Selwyn’s hopes and dreams. So, I sabotaged myself.”

“Well, that, er, that certainly sounds a lot more honorable than surrender,” Harry says dubiously. “Who’s Luis Selwyn?”

“Be glad you don’t know her,” Henry says darkly. “D’you reckon they’ll let me design a tower?”

Harry considers the rapidly growing fort. There appears to be a chimney, and Susan is currently yelling at someone over the viability of ice as a structural support for the addition of a second floor. “You’ll have to ask Tom.”

Henry runs off and leaves him to his bricks.

Just as his fingers are going numb, Tom saunters over, hitting him with a warming charm and a smile brighter than one he would normally wear in public. “Ho, brickboy!”

“Don’t you have people to be ordering around?”

“Hermione just showed up, so I thought I’d let her deal with everyone. They’ve just crossed the threshold into madness, and I don’t want to be in charge of that.” Tom gestures toward the snow structure, which is growing grand enough to no longer accurately be described as a ‘fort.’

“You let Henry do his tower?” The tower is a spindly, leaning thing. Henry has climbed to its top and is busily casting spells to stabilize the construction, but it looks ready to collapse at any moment. “How did he even build that thing so quickly?”

“I didn’t _let him_ do anything. He just kind of… showed up and asserted himself. At least Henry’s decently competent, though –” the tower crumbles in a shower of snow and screaming students. Henry floats down on a featherlight charm to crow over the ruins. “– never mind. I was a bit more worried about his copycats.”

Indeed, a gaggle of Hufflepuffs seem intent on erecting two similarly spindly towers on the far side of the fort. The taller of the imitations gets to about half the height of Henry’s monstrosity before it topples over, knocking out a wall of the fort proper. Harry winces.

Tom tries to help him with the brick creation, but doesn’t have the magical power to be any sort of efficient. Instead, he settles on ordering Harry around. Harry wants to snap at him to go bother someone else, but Tom’s suggestions are actually kind of ingenious. With Harry’s snow-bricklaying bolstered by Tom’s strategic mind, Susan is able to organize a quick fix to the destroyed wall and put the responsible Hufflepuffs to work on a third floor.

Someone – probably one of Henry’s lackeys – brings out lunch from the kitchens, complete with picnic blankets from the house elves. They eat in the strangely warm fort, the insides of which have been engraved with enormous, swooping floral designs across the walls. Great windows overlook the Black Lake.

Tom takes a sip of hot chocolate as Harry wanders over and admires the view. “The windows were my idea.”

“The flowers here are lovely.”

“Those are some combination of Dean and Luna.”

Harry traces his hand over the inlay of a leafy vine winding across the windowsill. “It’s amazing what all four Houses can do together in just a morning.”

“I think it has less to do with House diversity and more to do with sheer quantity of people with magic,” Tom says. “I’ve always wondered what a wizarding militia – even a small one – might be able to accomplish.”

Harry feels his face twist despite himself. “A _militia_ , Tom, really? How about a – a task force, or, I don’t know, something that doesn’t involve soldiering.”

“A band of knights errant?”

“That’s soldiering with a bottle of idealism.”

“Harry! Tom! Are you two going to come eat?” calls Ron. He, Neville, Geoff, and all their friends in Ravenclaw and Slytherin have taken over the stairs up to the second floor, arranged around one of Hermione’s bluebell flames.

Harry comes and sits down next to Ron, accepting a sandwich and a cup of hot cocoa. “We’re blocking the stairs,” he says, digging in.

“That’s the point,” says Susan through a bite of pie. “We’re only letting three people up to the second floor at once. ‘S not structurally sound enough for more’n that. Luna ‘n Dean ‘n Ginny’re up doing some artsy thing, so we’re standing guard.”

Almost as soon as they’ve finished with lunch and come outside to regroup, however, their little castle collapses in a great puff of powder, its ramshackle chimney and half-constructed roof pulling it down, from the ill-thought-out third story to Tom’s elegant windows. There’s a moment of shocked silence, then a great chorus of laughter.

Someone throws a snowball, and soon everyone’s launched into another snowball fight in the ruins of their creation.

***

The snow lingers, growing progressively more icy and muddy as November wears away. Harry’s nightmares, which had mostly subsided after his surgery in the Department of Mysteries, surge back. He dreams of the oaks at an alarming frequency, always waking with the taste of ash in his mouth.

He hasn’t encountered the Mother since that faraway September day, when even Hogwarts had seemed strange to him and seeing a god in the Forest could fall neatly into place with his understanding of this new time. 

But he feels her watching him in the Forest, on days when he goes wandering without Tom, days when he fights trolls for the sport of it and rides on the backs of thestrals.

“I would have done anything to go home, this fall,” he tells Tom on the first of December, tilting his head up to see a new fall of snow drift down into the unicorn’s meadow, black against the bright sky. “Just to have my friends back, even if it meant Lily and James being dead, and Geoff and Dahlia never existing. I can’t imagine that anymore.”

Tom blinks at him, snowflakes caught in his hair and eyelashes. His cheeks, pink with the cold, tighten in a smile. Lately, it’s so easy to forget the creature he might become. Harry feels it at the base of his throat, something thick and uncertain that pulls when he swallows. “I’ve felt since August that I was destined to be in this time,” Tom says, eyes stripped of color by the white of the sky.

“According to the centaurs, none of this was _destined_. Don’t you wonder if we might just stop _being_ in this time? That we might just… wake up one day and find ourselves back in the worlds we were born to?”

“Time travel doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t undo itself. We belong to this place, now,” Tom says, stepping closer, rubbing the scars cracking up his forearm. He’s so tall that Harry has to crane his head to see his face. “Is this world really so horrible? You still have your friends. They’re happy, here.”

“They’re not the same people I knew – before, we were more than friends, or schoolmates, or… they would have died for me in a heartbeat. I would have died for them. These versions of them –”

“They’re children,” Tom’s eyes are as dark as the wet wood of trees against the snowy ground. “You said something, after the manticore left. That they’d lost their scars.”

Harry’s hand falls to his side, where the manticore had scratched him, remembering bleeding onto the roots of the oaks. “But maybe I don’t need people I would die for. Not in this world. There’s nothing to die for here…”

“Not even peace?”

“I – Sometimes, I think I was born to die in battle.”

“I don’t think I was born to die at all, some days.”

“Tom –”

Then Fennel’s there, all teeth and whiskery beard, and Tom’s feeding him celery that he stole from the house elves, and Harry can pretend the chill in his gut is just the weather getting to him.

***

Break creeps up on them, and for the first time in his life Harry doesn’t put his name down to stay in the dorms.

It’s surreal, the thought of Christmas without Hagrid’s trees and Dumbledore’s magic party favors and an endless string of chess games lost to Ron. Come down to it, though, none of those things would be at Hogwarts in this time anyways.

The week leading up to the holiday break passes dreamlike, in threats from Snape to do the homework or suffer consequences, and promises to visit Lyra and Calcifer over break, and ridiculous Care lessons on Niffler hibernation habits – Tom keeps breaking off into rants, when they’re alone, about his disdain for Grubbly-Plank, who ‘couldn’t tell a firetoad from a basilisk,’ and his derision has worn off on Harry.

A day before the great scarlet engine comes to collect them, Harry goes into the woods to say goodbye. They’ve ‘gotten under his skin,’ the oaks – or that’s how Tom had put it once, watching Harry’s fingers drum a soft beat into a library table, examining the unicorn doodled in the margins of his essay. Tom’s gotten under his skin, too, in his own subtler way, with little touches to Harry’s scarred wrist and the way he laughs when Harry tells him about leprechaun gold and the Quidditch World Cup.

It’s then, crunching through the frost, when Harry looks up to see Tom Riddle in the midst of the oak grove, leaning over a pile of fur and bones, blood fragmenting out of the corpse and into the soil.

And it’s not – it’s normal, really, and Tom tells Harry about the realities of keeping the oaks content. And Harry knows that better than anyone – some days, he feels their bloodthirst as his own – _under his skin_ – but all he can think of is being eleven years old and terrified, and the sick gurgling of the hooded monster that Tom could someday be.

He leaves, then, as unnoticed as he would have been with his old Cloak, and packs his bags, and spends the train ride with the Gryffindors.

They buy him peppermint frogs, which he’s never tried before, and talk about Quidditch. Harry should be enjoying himself, but there’s a stillness inside him that he can’t quite laugh through. He spends the journey leaning against the window, scanning the horizon for a glimpse of the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, do you like mob AUs? How about occultism? With bonus Tomarry? Who am I kidding, _of course you do_. Go read [TreeDaddyD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreeDaddyD/pseuds/TreeDaddyD)'s incredible new fic [Dreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23673487/chapters/56831134)!
> 
> If you got the "Ho, brickboy!" reference, drop a comment so that we can be bestest friends forever. Not expecting anyone to recognize that one -- it's very niche and overly subtle. But I can hope. :)
> 
> Thank you for reading! You are all wonderful.  
> 🦈


	11. The Holidays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom adjust to their first winter holiday away from home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was beta'd by the wonderful [TreeDaddyD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreeDaddyD/pseuds/TreeDaddyD)!

James, Lily, and Dahlia are all waiting for them off the platform. It’s odd to come to this place and not feel dread, to scan the crowd for Lily’s blaze of hair instead of Vernon’s walrus mustache.

James hugs Harry before the others. Harry, grateful, leans the side of his head onto his father’s broad chest and feels safe.

Lily’s at his shoulder in the next moment, hand feather-light on his back, eyes bright and sorrowful. “The Unspeakables asked for you this morning. They want us to bring you in as soon as possible.”

All his aches – the bruise on his knee from Quidditch practice the other day, the pressure at his temples from the hours on the train, the sick lump in his throat whenever he looks at Tom – seem to multiply.

He hands his trunk over to James and entrusts Death Star to Dahlia. Lily stretches out a hand to him, and he takes it. She has his hands, he notices distantly, all wide thumbnails and bony knuckles. 

Before he can catch his breath, she Apparates them away – and then they’re outside a Muggle public restroom, flushing themselves down the toilets, getting spat out in the Atrium, and finding themselves face to face with an Unspeakable.

It’s humiliating and miserable. Harry can hardly find it in himself to be surprised when the Unspeakable tells Lily to leave Harry in their hands and go home.

“I don’t mind,” he says reflexively, biting his lip at the worry on her face. “Really, I don’t. Go home and be with the others.”

Her hug smells of roses and vanilla. It lingers on his clothing even after he’s been whisked away and ushered off to an elevator that drags him, once again, down into the sterile bowels of the Ministry.

They drop him off in a claustrophobic operating room that’s all-too-familiar, complete with a narrow hospital bed and a gleeful Spavin. “Oh, Harry Potter! Always such a pleasure to see you, dear – our session today is going to be nice and quick. Just a little bit of Veritaserum and we’ll let you get back to your family.”

She peels off one of her gloves, revealing taloned fingers threaded by ghostly green feathers. Harry finds himself entranced by those fingers as they wrap around a syringe. Spavin’s other hand cups his elbow, warm even through the leather of the glove. The needle stings. He watches it sink into his arm, deeper, deeper – and it compresses, sending a stream of clear liquid into his body.

As before, he feels the effects immediately. A sense of profound wellbeing, like James is there behind him, holding his head up; Spavin’s touch to his arm could almost be Lily. _No_ , he thinks, _they’re not here, they left me here_ – and it’s not a rational thought, but it does send a momentary cold shock of lucidity through him.

The potion is too strong, though, and in the next heartbeat it sweeps him away again. He feels so safe, and floaty…

A voice emerges from the haze. _Do you consider yourself friends with Tom Riddle?_

A friendship? Is that what this relationship is? It does _feel_ like a friendship. Hours spent laughing in the Forest, purple-inked essay annotations and mint-green armchairs, the steady brown of Tom’s eyes. But he still has nightmares of a Tom with livid red eyes and a shrill pitch to his laugh; there are days when just the sight of Tom talking to Ginny is enough to send him scrambling for his wand.

Tom isn’t the monster Harry had glimpsed in the diary. He’s just a crooked boy with an unknowable temper, beloved of oak trees, snake whisperer. He is capable of such great kindness – _filching celery for the unicorns,_ _helping Pansy with Dark Studies, the high sound of his singing voice during long nights in the common room when only Harry’s awake to hear_ – but then there are the times when he seems like an alabaster statue, distant and cruel, a deer’s blood staining the days-old snow at his feet.

_Has Tom Riddle expressed an interest in immortality to you?_

Yes. A hunger in his eyes when he talks about the Mother’s mythology. Books on soul magic that Harry’s sure he didn’t have permission to read. A confession in the snow, the sky a flat white portent.

_Good, good. Where’s that list –? Oh, thank you Fawley. Harry, tell us again about that diary…_

And Harry does. They ask him about Voldemort, and the diary-Riddle, and the basilisk deep below the school. He talks until the answers feel like great trout, hooked by the potion and dragged flailing out through his esophagus; until his lips are dry and his voice becomes a low rasp.

And then the potion wears off, and he’s escorted unceremoniously into the light, where they leave him feeling slimy and exhausted in the Atrium on a Saturday evening. The bags under his eyes feel like physical weights. He takes off his glasses, spends a moment frozen, trying to center himself amidst the blur of it all.

He chooses a Ministry Floo at random and lets it carry him back to the Potter house and into his parents’ arms.

***

Tom curses himself silently as he watches Harry and Dahlia over lunch, their dark hair streaked with matching teal highlights. This is Tom’s fault, in its own way. Had he just stood back, not encouraged Harry to dabble in magical experimentation, none of these grievous fashion missteps would have come to pass.

“ _I_ want that!” Geoff says upon seeing Dahlia’s hair.

“I don’t know that it would have quite the same… ah, _effect_ on your hair, Geoffrey,” Tom says sternly, looking over Geoff’s dark red hair with a critical eye.

Harry points his wand at his brother anyway, crowing, “too late!” The streaks are more horrible than Tom could have imagined. Geoff looks delighted.

Henry laughs at his little brother and ends up with pink highlights of his own.

Tom curls his lip and pointedly returns to his food, stopping Harry with a casual, “I think not,” before his own hair can be similarly mutilated. “Harry, I’m glad you’re feeling better –” Harry had spent the previous day scratchy-voiced and sleep-deprived, sulking in their room and telling Tom hurtful things like, ‘I don’t want to deal with your face right now’, “– but I think I’ve had enough of hair pranks for a lifetime. We need to teach you some new tricks.”

“This _is_ a new trick,” Harry says mildly, giving himself pink streaks like Henry’s alongside the blue-green already there. It’s hideous. Tom clenches his fists under the table, biting his lip against a baldness charm. Dahlia clamors for rainbow streaks, which is _not helping_.

Henry leans back in his chair, adjusting his glasses. The pink is strangely fetching. “Geoff, Dahl, why don’t we let Harry and Tom in on some of our Christmas Eve traditions?”

“D’you mean _presents_?” Dahlia, usually so reserved, looks veritably ravenous at the prospect.

“I mean silly Muggle movies and all the tea we can stomach.”

This idea appears to excite her nearly as much.

As Rooke makes tea, Harry runs off to get Death Star – apparently she ‘likes movies’ – and Tom and the Potters head down to the viewing room in the basement.

“ _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_ ,” Henry announces with great fanfare. It’s a bright, charming American film. Harry seems a bit too enthused about the song it plays in the middle – ‘stink, stank, stunk!’ – he keeps whispering to Death Star, who, apparently alarmed at the notion, flutters over to sit on Tom’s shoulder. She helps him eat his way through half a tin of chocolate biscuits as they finish _The Grinch_ and move on to a movie about a reindeer with a red nose.

“Dad loves this one,” Geoff confides, but James is at work and cannot verify. The reindeer makes friends with a dentist and escapes the clutches of an abominable snowman. It’s all very surreal.

Henry pops in a third film, this one about an animated Muggle boy named ‘Charlie’ and his friends, who talk about things Tom doesn’t fully understand as they try to put on a play. There’s a Christmas tree, tiny and a bit lovely.

Halfway through, Harry falls asleep, head lolling to the side, glasses falling down his face. Tom takes them off for him, folding them on his lap, and when the movie ends with snowfall and song, Geoff very gently levitates Harry up to bed and Dahlia tucks him in.

“Does anyone want me to turn your hair normal?” Tom asks drily when they’re back in the living room.

The Potters all shoot him identical looks that say _absolutely not, you fucking madman_ , which he gets from Harry so often that he’s built up an immunity. They curl up together to watch snow start to fall in the early winter dusk.

Lily and James come home bearing more biscuits, these ones baked by one of Lily’s coworkers. 

They settle into a sleepy evening playing Monopoly, to Tom’s utter glee. He shuffles happily with his stacks of bright money. The game may have changed since the forties, but he’s got the same knack for it now as he did back then.

“How do you keep winning?” Lily asks, surveying the board with mounting horror. “I thought this was a game of chance.”

James ventures upstairs to wake Harry, who comes down rumpled with sleep but much improved by his nap. Rather than join in with the Monopoly, he sits down next to Tom and keeps up a string of mocking commentary. It’s distracting enough that Dahlia ends up winning the third game of the night with a smug little smile.

“Stink, stank, _stunk_ ,” Harry says with relish, beaming up at Tom.

“Oh, hush,” Tom says, sighing. “You weren’t here to see my last two rousing victories. At least you’ve cheered up, now.”

“This game sucks,” says Geoffrey, collecting all the paper money with a spell and putting it back in its box.

To Dahlia’s excitement, it’s finally time for Christmas Eve presents; Lily and James have bought them all thick quilts in their house colors, and a pretty lilac one for Dahlia. Tom thanks them profusely, nudging Harry out of a morose examination of his new green-and-silver blanket.

James laughs. “I tried to get you a Gryffindor one, but your mother wouldn’t let me.”

They sit for a while longer, clustered around the Potter’s Christmas tree, all festooned with real candles and little singing turnips, before Dahlia and Geoff fall asleep on each other and James, scooping his daughter up in his arms, declares it to be everyone’s bedtime.

After his nap, Harry’s not tired at all, and Tom is hopped up on some caffeinated tea Lily had given him. Neither of them is quite ready for bed, but they let James herd them away to their third-floor bedroom.

With an idle flick of his wand, Tom sends Harry’s hair back to its usual monochrome mess. Harry scowls ruefully, then pauses, frowning. “So, what did you think of those Muggle cartoons?” he asks, his casual tone obviously forced.

This must be a test, but Tom isn’t quite sure how. If Harry were from his time, the thing to say would involve a lot of sneering and decrying his filthy heritage. _No_ , he remembers, _I’m a half-blood anyway, not a Mudblood_ . But this is Harry, who has only ever expressed disdain for anti-Muggle beliefs. And this is 1995 – mainstream magical culture is very pro-Muggle _technology_ , at the very least. Tom frowns and opts for the truth. “I liked the one about the reindeer. It struck me as a profound metaphor, though I’m not quite sure what for.”

“Er,” Harry blinks. “Okay? But like, with Charlie Brown. Did you, for example, feel like torturing all the main characters?”

“Did the Unspeakables break you again? No, Harry, I did not feel like _torturing a bunch of cartoons_. Either cut to your point or shut up.”

Harry puffs up his cheeks in irritation. “I was under the impression that you aren’t exactly a fan of Muggles. I didn’t expect you to be so open to, like, Monopoly and Rudolph and all of that.”

“Uh,” Tom spends a wordless moment wrangling his utter confusion. “Harry? Do you remember the _Star Wars_ phase? I hope you do, because I’m still in it. Also, I literally keep an altered Muggle radio in my bedroom. I was raised by Muggles. I’m practically a Muggle artifact myself. Did I make a weird face at one of the arcade machines or something? What’s brought this on?”

“You killed a deer in the Forest before we left.”

Tom bites his tongue, feeling his confusion morph into a buzzing frustration. “Actually, I have killed _four_ deer in the Forest, at least since the beginning of the school year. This isn’t news. I just didn’t tell you about it because I saw how squeamish you got over the rabbits this summer – I figured you wouldn’t know how to deal with having to kill something bigger than that. What does this have to do with Muggles?”

“It’s just – you really do live up to your last name, Tom.”

“You don’t know how many times I’ve heard that line...” Tom murmurs. “I wouldn’t kill an animal for no reason.”

Harry dimples, clearly not catching the lie. “Why am I your friend, again?”

“I’m devilishly handsome and skilled with the flugelhorn?”

“The flugelhorn?”

“Well, I’ve _seen_ one. Once. Surely that counts for something.”

“Look at you, you’re being _goofy_. I – oh, never mind. I’m going to bed. Happy Christmas.”

“Happy Christmas,” says Tom, bemused. Harry’s suspicion is seemingly endless – but now he knows it has something to do with Muggles. How interesting.

He makes a notation in his diary and curls up for his long winter’s nap.

***

Tom wakes up with Geoff on his chest. Again.

This time he does not go for his wand. “Geoffrey, you are fourteen years old. This kind of behavior may have been ‘cute’ when you were eight years old. You’re not eight anymore. This is borderline inappropriate. Get off me or I’ll shave off your hair, transfigure each lock into a spider, and feed them to you _one by one_.”

“Henry said you only threaten people when you’re stressed,” Geoff says, scrambling off him.

Harry, sitting up in the other bed, yawns. “He threatens people when he’s embarrassed, mostly. If he’s actually angry, he won’t bother so much with the preamble.”

Tom grumbles – Harry’s right, unfortunately – and flicks his wand at Geoff, doing away with the hideous streaks in his hair.

“What do you want, anyway, Geoffrey?” Harry rubs grit from the corner of his eyes and stretches.

“I was up early – and Henry was _not_ – but you guys are morning people, right? So I thought you might keep me company before everyone else gets up.”

“The sun’s not even risen,” Tom says, opening their curtains to darkness.

“Yup.”

“And you want us to, what, talk you through your boredom while you wait for your family to wake up?”

“Yup.”

“Well, that’s not happening,” Harry says, then, before Geoff can deflate too much, “Come on, we can bake again or something. How’s that sound?”

They creep downstairs in the not-quite-dawn and set to work in Rooke’s kitchen. Harry makes gingerbread cookie dough, Geoff steals ‘samples,’ and Tom pets Lincoln the kneazle.

This doesn’t feel like Christmas. Christmas is a mostly deserted common room, hours of tutoring with Dumbledore, chasing a teenaged Filobrix through snowbanks on the back of a conjured zebra. The future may be a brighter place than Tom could ever have imagined, but he still misses home. He’s not sure that slight melancholy will ever go away. Part of him will always feel like a stranger, even knowing how this world will someday bow to him.

Harry stamps out little gingerbread people and puts them in the oven. Geoff tells them about some disastrous Yule celebration a couple of years back, when they’d been invited to the Longbottom manor and badly pissed off one of their bulls. In the meantime, Harry mixes up a bunch of sugar and cream and has Tom add different colors to it.

“Frosting,” he explains curtly to Geoff, and gives him and Tom a couple dispensers of the stuff to decorate the cookies with.

Geoff gives his cookies starry robes and smiling faces. Tom ignores their shape and inscribes them with little abstract patterns of swirling vines. Harry decorates none, insisting that he’s done his part, and he and Lincoln lope off upstairs to ‘watch the sun rise.’

“It’s cloudy,” Tom informs him as he wanders away – it’s still dark out the windows, but he can tell the snow is still falling thickly.

“Yep,” Harry says, voice muffled as he turns the corner.

“He’s moody today,” says Geoff, taking Harry’s absence as an invitation to start chomping on one of the undecorated cookies. “Oh, these are so good, Tom, you gotta try one.”

Tom tries a cookie. It _is_ excellent. “I think he’s missing our time. I know I am,” he says smoothly. He’s not sure if that really is Harry’s problem, but it’s as good an explanation as any.

“Oh,” Geoff’s shoulders slump. “Now I feel like a jerk. I didn’t even realize… this must be really hard for you two, huh?”

“It’s not like I had a family to spend the holiday with, before. I just haven’t quite adjusted to the fact that all my old friends are either grandparents or corpses.”

Geoff reaches for another cookie, ashen. “Merlin, Tom, I’m sorry. I’ve never even thought about it like that.”

 _Better than my own brother not knowing my real face. Better than my friends having replaced me with a copy of myself who’s better than me in every class but Defense_. He imagines Harry curled up above them, staring out into the gradually brightening sky. The thought of it pulls at his heart.

“I don’t suppose you’ve tried to get in contact with any of your friends?”

Tom plucks a third cookie from Geoff’s hands and puts it back on the table. “If you’re going to drown your sorrows in something, sugar is not the most efficient means.”

“Well?”

“I’ve not tried to contact them, no.” _Not the human ones, at least_. But his other friends: Fennel, Filobrix, Agatha. Those three are enough to make him feel that his first fifteen years on earth had been more than a fairy-given nightmare. The others have made no attempt to reach out to him, even through their grandchildren. It – it hurts. He tries not to think about it too often.

“You should. Maybe you’d be less sad.”

“Oh, Geoffrey – I’m not sad. I hardly miss my time on a normal day, but Christmas brings back good memories. Besides, my old friends have grown up to be quite important people. They haven’t the time to be socializing with schoolboys, even if they do remember me.” He squeezes his tube of frosting a bit too hard, smearing a large globule of green onto the hem of his little robed person.

Geoff goes silent and thoughtful, polishing off another cookie.

Lily comes yawning downstairs within the hour, Harry trailing after her.

“How was the sunrise, Harry?” Tom asks mockingly.

“Lily, can I sleep in Henry and Geoff’s room? I don’t want to deal with Tom anymore.”

Lily laughs and peers over Tom’s shoulder at his cookies. “Ah… Tom, some of those runes have a chance of exploding upon contact with human saliva.”

Tom hums in happy agreement. He’s particularly proud of the one he did in white and green frosting. It’s very pretty.

“Tom. I don’t want my children to eat cookies that explode in their mouths.”

“I thought all you Potters liked spicy food.”

She vanishes the offending cookies, to his mild dismay. They wouldn’t have been big explosions; he’d just wanted to see if he could surprise Harry.

They spend all of ten minutes curled up in front of the kitchen fireplace before Geoff decides he’s had enough and stampedes off to collect the rest of his family.

Soon Henry stumbles downstairs and Dahlia, seemingly wide-awake, is clambering into Harry’s lap and bouncing excitedly. “I’m particularly excited for the Game Boy,” she informs them all solemnly. “We’ve only four years now until I can have my Squirrel.”

“How did you –” sighs Lily at the same time as Harry says, “your _squirrel_?” and Henry says, “I’d forgotten about that phase of yours!”

In the next moment, James and Geoff tumble into the room and everyone starts in on their stockings. Tom is charmed to find his stuffed with little oranges, hazelnuts, and chocolate.

“When she was little, Dahlia had an imaginary friend. He was a little turtle with water powers, it was _adorable_. She called him ‘Squirrel’. I had no idea she even still remembers that,” Henry explains to Tom as he peels open one of his oranges and hands over a slice.

Tom accepts the piece of orange with gratitude, savoring the tang of citrus. He’s had more oranges in the past few months than the first fifteen years of his life.

“When are Sirius and Remus coming?” Geoff asks, eyeing the presents under the tree. “Like, are we waiting on them for stuff, or what? Not that I don’t miss them…”

James checks his wristwatch. “They said they’d be here at nine o’clock and it’s fifteen minutes past.”

Almost on cue, the puffing bang of the Floo comes from the other room. Geoff leaps to his feet to go greet his honorary uncles, Henry not far behind. Tom starts in on his hazelnuts.

“Are those cookies for eating?” James asks eagerly.

“Mhm,” Harry says. Tom catches him making a funny little gesture with his wand behind Dahlia’s back.

James bites down on his cookie and chews, beaming. “This is delicious! Lils, is this a new recipe?”

“Harry made them,” Lily says.

“I see,” James says, a bit choked now, his brown skin going very red.

“Rooke!” Harry says smugly. “A glass of milk for James, please?”

A moment later, James is pounding down his glass, looking somewhat recovered. “What was in that, fawn? Sweet Merlin. I don’t think I’ve had anything that spicy in years.”

“Rooke and I grew ghost peppers over the summer,” Harry says. “I put a couple seeds on top before you bit down.”

James summons the entire gallon of milk. “Suddenly I can see why you’re in Slytherin. Oh, there you are, Sirius… you just missed quite the prank from Harry here.”

“Happy Christmas, Sirius!” Harry says brightly. “Would you like a gingerbread cookie?”

Sirius quite literally breathes fire, James and Remus have to hold each other upright through their laughter, and Rooke disappears to buy more milk.

Tom is a bit put out that Harry has managed to steal his ‘deceptively painful gingerbread’ trick – but then it’s time for presents. Lily and James have bought him a beautiful new leather trunk for the holiday. In the face of such a handsome gift, it’s hard to feel anything but childish joy.

Dahlia’s ‘Game Boy’ – she must have snooped on her parents purchasing the thing – is one of those Muggle devices altered by a tricity box, like one of the arcade machines made palm-sized. Tom and the others are all fascinated.

Dahlia lets them each have a go at the game inside, which features a little pink creature with a cyclone in its stomach. Tom is far worse at the game than he is even at Centipede; Henry’s able to progress quite far, but can’t rival Harry’s score; Geoff goes down as early as Tom. Tom looks into his mind and sees that he sabotaged himself so Tom would feel better about his ineptitude. Tom finds himself pleased with the gesture.

Snape drops in around noon, laden with gifts for the Potters and a warm handshake for Tom.

They eat a lunch of sprouts and breaded potatoes. Geoff then drags them all outside, into over eight inches of fluffy snow. James transforms into the stag, bounding through the snow banks like they’re nothing, Dahlia clinging to his back with a fierce grin. Sirius chases them as a Grim, nipping playfully at the stags’ heels.

Tom and Harry somehow find themselves in the midst of a brutal competition against Henry and Geoff, each side trying to construct a snow tower that won’t fall over.

“This would go a lot faster if you could help,” Harry says, levitating bricks of snow in accordance with Tom’s insistent gesturing.

“I know,” Tom says, “though that’s your loss, isn’t it? Oh, no, a little to the right… yeah. Wait, Harry, stop! That’s where we’re putting the door.”

Harry and Tom manage to construct a sturdy three stories in the time it takes Henry and Geoff to build four. This is upsetting for all of three minutes, at which point the rival structure collapses in on itself.

“Slytherin might!” Harry yells at a snow-covered Henry from the window of their highest floor. “You two _live_ in towers, you have no excuse for shoddy constructions!”

His face is flushed with cold, his hair curling wildly in the damp of melted snowflakes. Tom is so distracted that he doesn’t even notice a Tickling Charm flying up at them until it shatters against Harry’s shield. 

“This means war!” he calls down, getting into the patriotic spirit. Down below, Geoff’s laughter reaches a bright pitch. Another spell comes at them; this time Tom is the one to snap out a quick _Protego_.

“Hey, Mum!” says Henry with a smirk visible even from this far distance. “We’ve got some uppity Slytherins to deal with – I don’t suppose you want to help?”

What follows is a siege for the history books. Harry snipes from the top floor of the tower while Tom runs off to the ground floor and weaves a defense of rune magic and animals transfigured from snow. In the end, it takes recruiting all the adults, an hour of trying, and a dose of luck for Henry’s forces to dodge Harry’s onslaught and break through Tom’s defenses.

James is the one to finish them off, charging through in his Animagus form and ripping their fort to pieces with his antlers alone. Henry runs in behind him, wand blazing, and gets swallowed in the avalanche of the fort right alongside Tom and Harry.

It’s been an excellent day, Tom thinks as they bid the assorted uncles farewell. He and Harry sit together in the living room, drinking hot cocoa with nutmeg and cinnamon, Harry spinning some far-flung tale about mermaids and the Black Lake. 

Tom keeps getting distracted by the silvery quality to Harry’s eyes. He reminds himself sternly that _that’s not even his real face, idiot_.

*** 

Harry makes a real effort to be quiet on the morning of New Year’s Eve. He creeps along the edges of the room so that the floorboards don’t creak, eases open the door –

“Oh, good morning,” says Tom, sitting up.

“I was trying to be _quiet_ , goddamnit. You’ve got the ears of a bat.”

“Hmm. Sorry to ruin your stealth mission.” He yawns delicately. “You know, there are spells for that. You could muffle your footsteps, interfere with my hearing…”

“I don’t know those spells, Tom, not everyone can be a walking textbook.”

“Pity.” Tom eyes him suspiciously. “So, what are you up to this morning that’s so secret you want to let me sleep through it?”

“If you do go back to sleep, you’ll find out in around an hour. Okay?”

Tom frowns at him for another moment. His eyes widen.

“Just give me an hour.”

Then Tom’s smiling, and for a moment there’s something hopeful in his eyes. Harry ducks out the door so he doesn’t have to look at him for any longer. A Muggle Christmas carol bubbles in his head as he creeps downstairs to bake his favorite pumpkin bread recipe.

Rooke helps him get the spices right, the kneazles again do their best to get fur in the bake, and the kitchen itself jumps to help at every turn. Harry places the bread in the oven with a feeling of triumph. Lincoln and Maggie join him for a breakfast of gingerbread cookies. No one else has dared touch those after what Harry did to Sirius and James.

The bread comes out of the oven around the same time that Tom arrives in the kitchen in his plain pajamas, bed-headed and a bit wary. Harry remembers another gray morning, months ago, an awkward breakfast spent assessing Tom for threats while waiting anxiously for the rest of the house to wake up.

“Happy birthday, Tom,” Harry says, offering up the steaming loaf, and Tom’s face splits into the sort of grin he only makes when they’re alone, the sort of grin Harry would never have earned that cold June morning. They’ve come so far since then; only now, back in the Potter house, is Harry starting to realize that. Somewhere along the way, Tom had started trusting him. Perhaps Harry can find it in himself to reciprocate.

“How did you even know?” Tom asks, taking his seat at the table.

“What?”

“That today’s my birthday.”

“It was in your file. Lily told me.”

“ _Your_ birthday wasn’t in your file?”

Harry’s toes curl a bit at the reminder of his disastrous fifteenth birthday. “My file is completely useless. You should ask James for a peek, it’s worth a bit of a laugh… they redacted my last _and_ middle name. You read through and every so often there’s a nonsense sentence they decided wouldn’t matter if it were leaked to the Prophet, like, ‘subject displays a fear of ants.’”

“You’re afraid of ants?”

“Not in the slightest. But it’s in the file, page three, no context given.”

“So, reading your file isn’t going to give me any insight into your tragic backstory? Shame.”

Harry scoffs. “My damn _face_ is classified, Tom.”

“True,” Tom says, but he’s not paying attention anymore. He seems captivated by the steam peeling off the fresh pumpkin bread.

“You don’t want to know my… my _tragic backstory_ , anyway.”

“Ah – ‘whatever’,” says Tom, reaching for the bread.

“Oi, get your hands away from that, it’s still cooling! Honestly, Geoff’s terrible manners are wearing off on you. I was going to frost it, how do you feel about that?”

“That sounds lovely,” Tom pulls his hands away, smiling teasingly.

Harry busies himself frosting the pumpkin bread, then cuts Tom a slice.

“You added chocolate chips?”

“Uh huh,” Harry says through a mouthful of end slice.

“’S delicious.”

“Er, Tom, you should probably know… I’m not the _only_ one who James and Lily told about your birthday.”

Tom sets down his piece of bread, paling. “Don’t tell me Geoffrey knows.”

“You should be more worried about Henry. He, er, he may have sent owls out to our friends in Slytherin. So. If there’s suddenly a surprise party, act surprised.”

“Let’s just go out to the woods for the day, yeah? We don’t have to put up with that sort of madness.”

“There’s over a foot of snow on the ground. Going out there does _not_ sound fun. Besides, they’ll probably bring presents,” Harry points out, just as a tall gray owl taps on the window. “Oh! That’s probably for you.”

Tom, grumbling, gets to his feet and lets the owl in. It drops a brown package into his hands and flies away immediately.

“Who’s that from, then?”

“Doesn’t say,” Tom says, throwing a few scanning charms at the package before shrugging and opening it up. “Oh. Socks. I – of course.”

“Dumbledore?”

“Yeah – how did you know? He always got me socks for my birthday. Never a pair this nice, but I suppose the Minister can afford nicer gifts than a Hogwarts professor.”

The socks are silver-and-blue. They remind Harry of his invisibility cloak – an eleven-year-old’s Christmas glee, the feeling of it tearing out of his grip in the explosion that ripped him from time.

“Tom! Happy birthday!” comes what sounds like Harry’s own voice, and then Henry’s waltzing into the room, a gleam in his pale green eyes. “I don’t suppose you would share some of that pumpkin bread…?”

Harry tosses a gingerbread cookie at him.

“I can’t trust this, Harry, c’mon.”

“Keep whining and I’ll spike your lunch. The cookie’s fine.”

Henry discovers that the cookie is indeed edible and ends up eating two more. Tom very reverently puts his pumpkin bread away in the fridge. He casts what looks like a protection ward around it.

Henry, it turns out, had been much more restrained about Tom’s birthday than Harry had expected. He’d owled just Calcifer, Lyra, and Pansy. “I asked them to Floo over at two o’clock for some tea and cake,” he says. “And Draco’s coming over, but that’s more for my sake than yours, Tom…”

But, as they discover at two o’clock, they should really have been worried about Geoff the whole time.

Lyra and Calcifer step through the Floo at each other’s heels, both looking highly aristocratic out of their school robes. Harry tugs self-consciously at his ratty dragon-patterned Weasley jumper and smiles in greeting. Before he can say ‘hi’, though, a very tall man comes striding out of the fireplace, shaking ash off his robes with a lazy flick of his wand.

Tom, getting to his feet to greet the Black and Lestrange heirs, makes a soft, breathy noise and falters in the middle of standing.

The man – hair a steely gray, eyes as blue as Lyra’s, stern lines at the corners of his mouth – scans the room and alights on Tom.

“Orion – rather, Lord Black,” Tom says. He’s stood up fully now, face gone closed and polite. Only Harry can see the tremble in his hands, folded behind his back.

“Tom Riddle. Isn’t this a strange sight, then? I always told old Nott that you would pop up one of these days, but I didn’t think you’d still be a child when you did! You should have heard the rumors flying around the school the year after you vanished – was that sixth year? No, fifth year. Most of us thought your Muggles had offed you,” the man – Orion Black – says with a chuckle.

No one else laughs along with him. Tom straightens his spine and arranges his face into a violently polite expression. “I believe we’re still waiting on a couple of guests. In the meantime, why don’t the four of us move into the parlor? Lord Black, Calcifer tells me you’ve been working on research while your sons handle the day-to-day – I’d love to hear more, if you’re willing…”

Harry moves to follow them, but Tom puts a hand on his shoulder that keeps him in his seat.

“ _Geoffrey_ ,” Henry says as soon as the Blacks are out of earshot. “Did you tell him to come?”

“He was in Slytherin with Tom,” Geoff says. “I found him in a yearbook – oh, don’t give me that look! He’s Lyra’s grandpa, I just owled her and said that if her grandpa wanted to come, he’s welcome for tea.”

Harry exchanges a look of exasperation with Henry, but at that moment, Malfoy steps through the Floo with a _whoosh_. Henry is on him instantly, catching his hand to steady him and whispering updates into his ear. Malfoy laughs, open mouthed, then glances at the door and bites his lip.

Then Pansy arrives in a puff of green flame, saying, “Harry! How have your holidays been? Thank you for sending along those coconut candies, they’re really quite delicious… Where’s Tom hiding, then?”

Thus assembled, they pile off to the parlor and find Lord Black and Tom talking eagerly, but quietly. Tom takes a sip of his tea – Harry notes with relief that his hands have steadied.

Pansy goes immediately to Calcifer and Lyra. The two of them seem to have broken into the stash of gingerbread cookies, and are lounging at the table. Harry follows Pansy – as does Malfoy, which is annoying until Harry remembers he’s Calcifer’s cousin and Lyra’s… ex-friend? He has trouble getting a read on that particular relationship.

“Not a very exciting party, is this?” Lyra pages dolefully through their selection of teas and comes out with a mild lemon chamomile.

“You’re the one who brought her _grandfather_ along,” Harry says, pouring himself a cup of earl grey.

They all glance over at Tom and Lord Black, both of whom seem deeply enthralled in whatever conversation they’ve been having.

“I think this means my plan worked,” Geoff says triumphantly. “This is a good birthday present, right?”

From the corner comes a sudden, “oh, _Riddle_ , I forgot what a scoundrel you were!”

Harry and Henry take simultaneous nervous sips of tea. Calcifer blinks. “I didn’t realize they were so close.”

After perhaps half an hour of quiet conversation and covert glances toward the birthday boy, Lord Black takes a rich timepiece out of his robes. With great ceremony, he finally sets about leaving. He and Tom shake hands – “thank you for coming, Orion,” says Tom warmly, and, “anything for an old friend,” says Lord Black.

Then the aged man is gone, leaving Tom alone with the incredulous stares of his guests.

Harry leans back in his chair, smothering a grin, and waits.

It’s Malfoy who breaks first. “Tom, please tell me you weren’t just flirting with my _great-uncle_.”

“Don’t be ludicrous,” Tom says, unruffled but for a hint of pink about the ears.

“He smiled more in the past hour than he normally does in an entire _week_ around the family.”

“Perhaps he misses his school days.”

Lyra clears her throat. “As long as Tom doesn’t make a habit of snogging seventy-year-olds, I don’t imagine why everyone’s so invested… Personally, though, I’m here for the cake. I see no cake. Is someone going to remedy that for me?”

Rooke, who appears to have been waiting eagerly for someone to say exactly that, pops up bearing a great chocolate creation that happily cleaves into slices and serves itself. Geoffrey leads his siblings in a rowdy rendition of ‘Happy Birthday,’ which confuses all the purebloods and makes Tom groan and mutter about turning people into tadpoles: “eternal tadpoles, too. None of that frog nonsense. You’ll just be a sad water creature for the rest of your life, knowing that deep within you have the capacity to breathe air but never quite unlocking it,” he tells them direly.

“Embarrassed?” Geoff murmurs to Harry.

“Exactly.”

Tom starts shooing people out once they’ve all had their fill, ignoring Lyra’s protest of “I wasn’t being serious about only being here for the cake...”

Calcifer presses a gift into Tom’s arms as their guests file towards the Floo.

“Thanks for the invitation, Henry,” Lyra says before the fire takes her away.

“Thanks for tolerating us, Tom,” Calcifer echoes drily.

“If you snog a seventy-year-old, I’m disowning you,” Pansy says brightly.

Tom frowns at everyone remaining. Harry thinks he’s considering erupting into a rant, but seems to decide against doing so in front of Draco.

“That was a bit of an adventure, wasn’t it?” Henry muses hours later, when the Potters are curled up in front of the kitchen fire and Tom’s melted himself into the sofa, engrossed in the ancient Transfigurations book enclosed in Calcifer’s package.

“Birthdays at this house are never dull,” Harry says, laughing tightly, remembering a sunlit party spent sulking in his room – and the following battle in the birch wood. He feels a weight settling onto his shoulders as they edge closer to midnight, and 1996.

Whoever killed those oaks is still out there, somewhere. Harry wonders if the manticore’s rider is watching the clock, too, waiting for the new year alongside the rest of Britain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading -- and a special thank you to those of you who have taken the time to comment! You are all so lovely.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this wintery chapter. It's very hot right now where I live, so all of this snow and hot chocolate feels out of place XD  
> 🦗


	12. A Green-Eyed Timepiece

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Partnered for a Dark Studies project, Harry and Tom confide in each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have [TreeDaddyD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreeDaddyD/pseuds/TreeDaddyD)'s incredible beta work to thank for any and all emotional depth in this chapter!

“From this point on, our class will be a more serious endeavor,” Snape says, pacing at the head of the classroom. “Second term, as you all know, focuses on Dark artifacts. Can someone tell me what a Dark artifact is…? Someone other than Mister Riddle, please. I want a _brief_ explanation, not the entire textbook. Miss Greengrass, thank you.”

“A Dark artifact is any magical object with a mind.”

“Exactly. Mister Nott, why do we call them ‘Dark’?”

“Because they have minds, and the capacity for thought, so they’re, like, inherently Dark?”

“Mister Lestrange, anything to add?”

“Dark magic practiced in their vicinity warps them slightly. A skilled Dark wizard can kind of ‘sculpt’ their minds.”

“Five points to Slytherin,” Snape grants with some reluctance. Harry has noticed he slightly favors Ravenclaw, his _alma mater_ , but not as strongly as he had once favored Slytherin. “I’ve brought in six examples for today’s lesson. You’ll each be analyzing one with a partner.”

Snape gestures to a table of objects that look less like wares from Borgin and Burkes and more like knick knacks off a bookshelf at the Burrow. A child’s stuffed cat, eyes glassy and strange; a little red book that makes him think of Tom’s diary; a Muggle snow globe holding the Eiffel Tower.

“Partner up, now. I’ll hand them out.”

Calcifer looks like he’s trying to catch Tom’s eye, but Tom whirls away from him, sitting backwards in his seat to look at Harry behind him.

“Yeah, okay then,” Harry says to the unspoken question in Tom’s raised brows.

Snape gives the two of them an old timepiece, gold and rusting. “I think this is his idea of a joke,” Tom says, lifting it up. “A pocket watch for the time travelers…”

Harry laughs, but he’s distracted by the others – Calcifer and Justin have the creepy stuffed toy, which Justin pokes while Calcifer looks on warily. Susan shakes the snow globe while Peryle stares into the ensuing Parisian blizzard. Lyra and Daphne – an unexpected partnership – page through the little notebook together.

“Your assignment for this class period is to try and determine the spell that your artifact was originally equipped with. Over the next week, you and your partner will work on a formal report on your object, to be turned in next Monday. Take this class period as your chance to ask me questions about your artifacts.”

Tom tries to pry open the faces of the timepiece, but can’t seem to crack them apart. Harry tries, too, and finds that the watch is just about welded shut.

Snape sweeps up behind them, looming as impressively as Harry remembers from Potions classes a lifetime ago. “This timepiece is more… _enigmatic_ than many of your classmates’ artifacts. I expect you two will find more success with it than your peers would –” on the other side of the room, Justin screams as the cat toy sprouts teeth “– but rest assured that for this assignment, I am grading based on effort, not the accuracy of whatever conclusions you might reach.”

Harry puts the pocket watch back on the table, biting his lip.

“Understood, sir,” Tom says. “Thank you.”

“So, what did that even mean? He just wants us to think really hard about this thing until we can write a foot about it?”

“Perhaps,” Tom says, narrowing his eyes. “Or…” he jabs the watch sharply with his wand.

Harry, who had _seen_ what happened to Justin when he tried that, scoots his chair sharply away.

The watch just slides a bit down the desk.

“If it has a mind, can’t you just, like, mind-read it?”

“That only works on things you can make eye contact with.”

“Your spooky magic powers are annoyingly limited.”

Tom’s lips twitch. “I must say, no one’s ever made that complaint before.”

“Er, maybe – _maybe it likes the sound of Parseltongue. That’s something Dark things like, isn’t it_?”

“ _It doesn’t look as if it much cares_ ,” Tom hisses, poking the watch again.

“Did it just twitch? I think it might have just twitched.”

“No, I don’t think so…”

They make no progress for the rest of class. Snape watches them through dark eyes, and Harry is sure he’s internally laughing at their struggle.

“I’ll see you all next week with your results. You can bring your objects back to your dorms with you, but if you manage to lose them there will be severe consequences… remember, _Accio_ doesn’t work properly on Dark artifacts, so don’t be careless.”

Tom slips the timepiece on under his robes, frowning deeply.

The Ravenclaws are delighted when, come Herbology, Tom is much more interested in huddling in the back of the greenhouse with Harry, debating their next course of action with the pocket watch. In Tom’s distraction, they win twenty points off of Sprout. 

Tom rushes off to Runes looking thoroughly preoccupied, leaving Harry to spend his free period with Pansy and Michael, who have taken up a nasty habit of public flirting.

He ends up taking refuge in the library, where he doesn’t have to deal with Pansy smirking and licking her lips while Michael makes up excuses to touch her hands. He’s writing up an essay for Transfigurations when one of his third years finds him, looking bored.

“Your friend – the Riddle kid? He’s looking for you.”

“Oh. Thanks, Melanie,” Harry says, stopping up his ink and rolling up his essay.

She gives him an expectant look. Smiling, he flicks her one of the arcade tokens he’d made auctioning off his most recent Centipede prize.

She melts away into the bookshelves, looking pleased.

Harry makes for the dungeons, passing Malfoy in the hall with a cheerful wave.

Tom is in neither the main common room nor the dorm common, so Harry goes looking for him in his and Calcifer’s room. He cracks open the door to find Tom flat on his bed, staring up at the pendulum swing of the pocket watch. “I don’t suppose you’ve come up with any genius ideas since I’ve seen you?”

“I’ve got nothing.” Harry shoves him aside so he can sit on the bed next to him. “Other than trying to heat it up, maybe make it a bit nervous.”

“Sounds like a decent last resort,” Tom says, passing him the artifact.

Harry considers its age-faded surface, gold glinting in the muted light coming in from the window to the lake. “I still don’t fully understand how these things – artifacts – get made. Snape made it sound like it’s just the combination of a spell anchor, magic, and time.”

Tom hums. His hair is getting a bit long again, and he’s taken off his thick uniform robes to leave him in just a white Muggle dress shirt and long slacks. Harry can see, in the soft green light, how a younger him might have seen this boy at sixteen and thought _handsome_. “I think he rather misrepresented it – or rather, oversimplified the process. It’s a spell anchor and magic, sure, but there are plenty of old magical objects that never develop minds. And there are documented instances of wizards turning objects into Dark artifacts within the span of only a week or so.”

“Tom, you’re just making this more confusing.” Harry flips the watch over, feeling the faded ridges of an inscription etched into the back.

“The third factor isn’t time so much as it is human thought: personification of something inanimate. There’s a reason there are so many Muggle horror stories about living dolls… this watch belonged to someone once, and that person must have seen it as a companion of some kind. The magic within it reacted, and it developed a mind to reflect that person’s perceptions.”

“I see,” Harry says, thumb stilling on the metal. “So it’s not opening because…?”

“In cases like this, my best guess is it’s grieving. Look at it – it’s ancient. I would guess it’s the kind of thing some witch or wizard carried around for years, then forgot to will it to a new owner… or the new owner wasn’t able to get it to cooperate and lent it to Snape as an example of a stubborn artifact.” Tom looks down at the watch, oddly fond in a way that makes Harry want to hit him in the shoulder.

Instead, he just says, “that’s so sad,” then, thinking of the diary, “you don’t suppose any of _our_ things have minds?”

Tom considers this for a moment. “Maybe that wristwatch of yours, if it had some sort of enchantment on it, at least. If you kept wearing your glamour pendant for a couple years, it could probably develop a mind… I know broomsticks are kind of infamous for growing minds after a couple of years; that’s why secondhand brooms tend to be so difficult. Did you have some sort of childhood toy, before, that you projected a personality onto? Those can become artifacts if they’re around enough magic.”

“I had a pair of toy soldiers,” he says idly. One had been missing an arm, the other flattened by Dudley’s careless feet. “I used to pretend they were knights, going on quests… I mostly played with the spiders, though.”

“The spiders?”

“There was a bit of an infestation in the cupboard under the stairs at my aunt’s and uncle’s.”

Tom blinks, uncomprehending.

Harry hands back the timepiece, feeling that he’s gripping it too hard. “I’d forgotten I didn’t tell you… I used to sleep in a cupboard. I spent a lot of time around the spiders. I would talk to them, sometimes. It was almost like having friends.”

This is the sort of thing he never could have said in front of Ron, but Tom’s eyes are level and accepting, and Harry can’t quite help but take the opportunity to confide in someone about his childhood.

“I’d let them spin webs around my fingers and crawl on my clothing. They each had names… Willa, Charlie, Adam. I named them after children I knew from school, kids I thought I could be friends with if not for Dudley.” There had always been a Tom-spider, too. A chill runs through him: he’d never known a Tom in primary. He’s not sure what to make of the realization.

“You would get along with Rubeus, I think,” Tom says. “He never could understand why people were afraid of spiders…”

“I stopped playing pretend with them two years before I came to Hogwarts,” Harry admits, feeling pins and needles prickle at his arms. “That was when the accidental magic started getting bad. They’d lock me in the cupboard for days without meals. I’d have to eat…”

He goes silent, awash with the memory of slippery legs scrabbling against the roof of his mouth. Only later had he realized it was more merciful to kill the spiders first: place a raggedy fingernail to the head and press, wait for them to curl into little balls of dead, crunching matter.

The cupboard is always so dark in his memories. He’d seen by the moonlight that filtered through the grate in the door, curled around himself like he himself was one of his spiders, the life crushed out of him. The ache in his stomach had burned, but more softly than Aunt Petunia’s scorn. Those old memories of magic and tears and dead spiders and shame coil within him, freezing him in place. Harry grips the edge of Tom’s new quilt, clinging to that scrap of reality.

He doesn’t realize he’s trembling until Tom takes his hand, their scars fitting together. Harry feels the pulling emptiness of tears surge through him, but he sets his jaw against it – he feels, suddenly, that it was a mistake to trust Tom with this much – 

“I don't see thestrals because of people I saw die during the bombings,” Tom says, low and scraping, hands still caught in Harry’s but eyes wandering elsewhere. “I've been able to see them since my first day at Hogwarts. I killed a boy when I was ten years old. It was an accident, but I still feel it sometimes. A bloodstain on my magic.”

Harry isn’t sure what to do. He feels like a thin shell packed with feeling, like if he moves too much it’ll all come spilling out, tears and mucus and a bizarre urge to hug Tom. He squeezes his hand instead. 

“His name was Dennis Bishop. He was kind to me, not like the others. I thought he might be… a friend. There was another girl, Amy, who he was close with. One summer, the orphanage took us on holiday to the ocean. The three of us went wandering together, along the beach. The local snakes told me about a cave nearby, and we wanted to find it – we imagined there might be treasure inside, like in Tom Sawyer.

“They followed me along the cliffs, and we found an opening just big enough for an ill-fed child. It opened up inside, and we went deeper. Far, far inside, we found an underground lake, lit from above by what looked like stars… I learned later that they were just glowworms, but I thought they were magic. Real magic, not the funny tricks I could do. There were snakes there – they came to hunt the blind fish in the lake – and I told them they could come out. I trusted Dennis. I wanted to show him what I could do.”

Harry’s throat is too swollen for speech. His eyes catch on the diary on Tom’s nightstand, remembering how it had called to him three years ago. A lifetime ago. Why is Tom telling him this? Is this some kind of strange Slytherin ritual, an exchange of weaknesses?

“We were standing by the edge of the lake. I was excited – I’d never… never _discovered_ something before. It was like something out of a book. But then Amy said that what the nuns said about me was true, and the snakes proved that I was evil… and then I looked at Dennis, and I could _see_ the thoughts behind his eyes. He stepped forwards, and I knew he was planning to push me into the water. That was the first time I used Legilimency.”

Tom’s voice is steady, rhythmic. His words fall softly on Harry’s ears, like beats in the song of the oaks. He feels his pulse begin to slow.

“There wasn’t anything premeditated about it, nothing cruel. He just knew that the nuns had told him what _evil_ was, and what one ought to do when one found it, and I must have looked – well. He wanted to see what it looked like to drown a person. That was the main thing. He was _curious_ . I saw death in his eyes, and he came for me in a rush, and I was so scared, Harry. My magic reacted, and then _he_ was the one in the water… I could have let him up. I didn’t.

“ _I_ saw what it looked like to drown a person. And it was horrible, but all I could think was that I was glad it wasn’t me… Amy saw it, too. I don’t think either of us were ever quite the same.”

Harry finds Tom’s eyes. This time, Tom doesn’t look away. “You don’t regret it.”

“Never.”

“But you haven’t forgiven yourself, either.”

“I think, sometimes, that they were right. That I’m monstrous. Not because of my magic, but because… well. It was too easy for me to kill Dennis, that day. I know I would do it again.”

Harry thinks of a bloodied deer, a unicorn’s chest heaving in the moonlight. A flash of green and a woman’s screams. The gray of Cedric’s eyes going bright green for the breathless moment before he crumpled. This Tom has killed, and he may well kill again.

But Tom can recognize his own monstrosity. He’s disturbed by what he sees in himself. What would he say if Harry told him about the blood on Voldemort’s hands?

He would regret those deaths, Harry is sure. “I forgive you,” he realizes, looking down at the pale back of Tom’s hand, knotted with still-livid pink scars.

“You called me a psychopath, that day in the woods.”

“I was wrong. I’ve seen you care.”

Tom’s eyes flutter closed. Harry wants to put his thumbs there, feel the thin skin of his eyelids.

“I think this place is unraveling me, sometimes,” Harry admits. “I’m losing the person I was meant to be, forgetting…”

“You were a soldier.”

“This time was made for scholars and artists, not warriors. I’m just some twisted iteration of Henry, here.”

The door slams open.

They both look up, startled.

Calcifer stumbles in. “Tom, you’ll never believe – oh, hey, Harry. I’m going to just, uh. Yeah.”

Calcifer edges out, closing the door carefully behind him, but the delicate understanding weaving itself between the two of them has been shattered.

Harry lets go of Tom’s hand, picking up the pocket watch. “We should get back to work,” he says, hoping Tom can’t hear the tremor in his voice.

“Yeah,” Tom pulls the green dye up out of the quilt from Lily and James, then puts it back, scowling.

Harry's fingers again find the ridges of the inscription. “I think there’s something written on the back, look here.”

Tom reaches out for the timepiece, fingers shaking minutely, and holds it up. “Give us a _Lumos_ ? Thank you. You’re right, there _was_ something around the rim there… it’s faded now, but maybe –” He runs his wand around the edges of the time piece, and as he does, the words light up.

Harry feels a nasty shiver run down his spine, thinking of the diary-Riddle spelling out flaming words in the air. Forgiven or no, it’s difficult to let go of the specter of what had been Tom’s future. “Another spell of your own devising?”

“Mhm,” Tom says, squinting. “It says, ‘ _the harmony of harps to banish sorrowful days_ ’.”

“That’s not very helpful.”

“Maybe it wants us to sing to it.”

Harry looks away, hoping to hide his troubled thoughts. “I met a Cerberus who liked to be sung to. His name was Fluffy,” he says idly.

Tom smiles uncertainly, latching onto the hint of levity. “I hate when you say things like that, because I can tell you’re not lying – and yet I can’t comprehend how you might be telling the truth.”

“Are you going to sing to it or not? You know I can’t do music… stuff.”

“I think you could be quite the drummer if you set your mind to it. You’ve a good sense of rhythm,” Tom says, clearing his throat. “What should I sing?”

“ _Tom_.”

“Oh, all right,” he says. Placing the timepiece on the bed, he starts up a low hymn in what sounds like Latin.

Tentatively, like a clam easing its way out of its shell, the watch’s faces begin to crack open. Harry chews his tongue in excitement, and though Tom’s song falters momentarily, he doesn’t stop singing. Gradually, a series of high, plucked notes stream out of the fully open clock face, a mournful triplet beat that grows steadily louder.

Tom’s melody subsides into a soft hum along to the harp music. Gently, he reaches out, his spider’s leg fingers cupping the timepiece and holding it at eye level. At first, Harry sees only darkness where the clock face should be – and then, blinking into being, a human eye colored like the underside of a leaf.

Harry sucks in a quick breath. Tom leans closer, and both songs cut off – the timepiece snaps shut with a violence that has them both jumping back.

“That was really fucking weird,” Harry says. “Even by wizard standards. Even by _my_ standards.”

Tom cradles the timepiece closer, paler than Harry’s seen him since the manticore attack.

“You made eye contact with it.”

He nods.

“Well?”

“I think we have enough to write our report, just based on the music. Don’t you think? We can write it up tomorrow and have the rest of the week free of Dark Studies homework.”

“But what did you see in its mind?”

Tom shrugs, looking past him. “We were right. It _is_ in mourning. And Snape didn’t borrow or inherit it, it belongs to him.”

He’s hiding something, something that’s shaken him deeply. “What –”

“I’m going to do some Runes work,” Tom slips the watch under his shirt and starts pulling textbooks and a calligraphy set out of his bag. “I’d rather not be distracted.”

Harry gets up, but hesitates. They had been so close to _something_ before Calcifer interrupted. He’s not ready to leave Tom yet.

“ _Harry. Please_.” Parseltongue, now. Harry an impotent frustration clawing at his insides, and reaches for his wand before realizing how insane he’s being. They’re both pushed beyond their limits. Perhaps Tom isn’t the only one who needs to be alone for a moment.

Harry swallows and lets himself out. 

At a loss for what to do with himself, he goes out to the arcade, where he can lose himself to the solemn focus demanded by the machines.

***

Somewhere between green eyes in a bloody face and towers of ice, something bright and hopeful has been building in Tom. 

He goes to the Slytherin-Ravenclaw Quidditch match at Calcifer’s insistence, but just ends up watching the sky above the game where Henry and Harry circle, darting like sparrows. 

Just minutes into the game, Harry dives straight for the pitch, pulling away a second before he hits the ground. Tom feels the vertigo in his own gut.

He spends a long moment breathless before he’s being hauled to his feet by a cheering Susan. “Harry’s got the Snitch!” she shouts, and indeed, Harry’s silhouetted against the sky, flying a victory lap with a triumphant glint of gold held tight in his hand. “It was over by the stands – he must have dived to distract Potter!”

The resulting party is terrible, all alcohol and noise and disgustingly happy children. Tom sits in the corner, trying to give out an unapproachable aura while he magically scans the younger kids’ punch for spiking. Harry sits in the center of the common room, all tides moving around him, looking radiant. His snitch flutters overhead, dancing in the cool light of the lake.

And maybe Tom has been watching Harry like this for a while now. The way his hair had looked when he let Pansy put little braids in it; the wispy darkness that gathered at the corners of his face before George Weasley taught him a shaving charm; the dimple in his cheek.

Sometimes he’ll see Henry at a distance and feel like the wind’s been knocked out of him, before he realizes that his height is all wrong and his posture is different; he’s left feeling obscurely disappointed but not quite ready to think about why. 

Every week, he waits for Harry after Defense, when he stays behind for chats with Professor Longbottom. When he needs someone to rant at, he saunters into Harry and Michael’s room and demands Harry’s attention. On weekends, he walks with Harry out to the Forest just to watch him fly with the thestrals while Tom pretends to read about goblin citizenry rights.

He’d thought, once, that Harry was like a fountain, bubbling with wonder. It had annoyed him at the time, but he can hardly imagine that now: he can’t see Harry’s thoughts, but he can sense their shape, and he knows they’re _electric_. Harry’s mind isn’t a fountain, but a _thunderhead_ , bright with ideas. 

Tom had had dalliances with Orion; nothing overt, ever, just dances and flirtations and the sweet knowledge that it didn’t really matter, that it would go nowhere. He’d kissed Billy Stubbs behind the old willow tree in the garden, where the nuns would never find them, and thought if _this_ was love, he could handle it without much trouble.

Not that this thing with Harry is love. But it’s more, he thinks, than he’s ever felt before. At the very least, it’s trouble.

He hadn’t even _liked_ Harry when they first met, just months ago. He’d thought him ‘vacant and secretive,’ he remembers, it’s even written in his diary somewhere…

They go out to see the oaks in early March, in the midst of a light drizzle that slicks the trees black and makes Tom feel clean. Harry squints up into the sky and laughs at it, hair curling like wool in the damp.

The song of the Forest is muted under the drizzle, but almost more powerful for it. Tom hums along softly and tries not to think of the little pocket watch’s harp-song. Tries not to think of its secrets. He hadn’t dared to meet Professor Snape’s liquid black eyes in class, as they returned the timepiece and their accompanying report.

Tom thinks he sees the Mother in a flash of white behind the trees, but he blinks and she’s gone.

He remembers that he’s brought his umbrella, but he’s too soaked to bother with it now. Besides, he much prefers its utility as a prop when furled to open, so there’s that.

The oaks seem delighted to see them. Tom plants his umbrella spike-first into the mud beside the standing stone and wanders over to the Lichen-Streaked One, who greets him with solemn joy. 

Just a week ago, he’d fed them one of the massive wild hogs of the deep Forest. He had told Harry exactly what he was doing and when he was doing it. Harry had come with and watched, head cocked to the side like Henry getting Charms help from Lily.

He comes up beside Tom now, grey eyes gentle, jaw round and wondering. _Not his real face_.

“What does it really mean, Tom? To be oak-speaker?”

Tom rolls his eyes and opens his mouth to respond.

“Other than ‘you get to speak to oaks’.”

“What, the wisdom of the ancients isn’t enough for you?”

“I’m getting the impression that there’s more, but I don’t exactly have a way to research it besides asking you.”

Tom hums, clasping his hands behind his back. “Well. First off, if the oaks call to you, you can actually find them. That’s kind of a big deal on its own.”

“So the manticore’s rider –”

“Yeah. They either heard the call or talked to someone who did. Even the Potters don’t know they’ve got a grove in their backyard.”

Harry scowls intently at the muddy ground. “How do they decide who to call? I mean, could we track the manticore’s rider that way?”

“I –” Tom shakes his head. “You’re right, I should have thought of that months ago. Good idea, Harry.”

Tom closes his eyes and leans against the trunk of the Lichen-Streaked One, letting himself slip out into the network of oak-minds. _The call_ , he projects. _Who, since me_?

_Someone very young – first year, perhaps, mind elegant among the other children of the castle, who the oaks sung to for seven years and never got to so much as venture inside the wood. Another child, swollen with Darkness like Tom, who tried to come but was frightened away by the centaurs. A professor, now, with a mind that tasted like strawberries. A child with a heart that burned so bright…_

Tom opens his eyes, breaking the connection. “Harry, I can’t – it’s too much information. They don’t see the world like humans do; I can’t identify people based on the way they experience them.”

“That’s all right. It was a long shot anyway,” Harry says, peeling wet bangs out of his eyes.

Tom frowns. “You were asking about what it means to be oak-speaker.”

“And you were being evasive for no real reason.”

“Was not – oh, never mind. You saw what I did to the manticore, back in July, the briar patch I summoned? I was only able to do that because of the oak’s favor. I can do a lot of plant-based magic on my own, but nothing quite that strong. By befriending the oaks, you are beloved of the Forest itself.”

“And beloved by the Forest’s resident giant albino centaurs?”

Tom glances around guiltily, waiting for the Mother to pop up out of the bushes, looking distant and disapproving.

“ _And_ the Forest’s Dark Market hags?”

“ _Yes_ , whatever.”

“Okay,” Harry says, clearly unsatisfied.

Tom runs a hand through his hair. “It used to mean more when wizards still belonged to the woods. We used to be more like the centaurs than the Muggles – used to rely more on the land than we did the fruits of our invention. The oak’s call was analogous to the choosing of a leader.”

“Huh,” Harry says, his scarred hand coming to rest curled over his chest.

***

They start a unit on unicorns in Care of Magical Creatures. Professor Grubbly-Plank clearly knows the information Hagrid’s textbook holds on the beasts, and nothing more. She brings the class to see four of them who she’s lured out of the Forest with sugar-dipped carrots. Fennel is there, though Tom knows for a fact that he hates sweet foods.

Grubbly-Plank calls Bulstrode and Diggle from Hufflepuff forwards to demonstrate proper unicorn patting procedure. “This one’s a beautiful specimen, isn’t she?” she says, touching Fennel’s mane. Fennel stands up straighter, baring his teeth like a wolf.

Tom has Harry, who has the longest Summoning range of anyone he’s ever met, to _Accio_ them up some celery from the kitchens for poor Fennel, who probably thought playing with Grubbly-Plank would be a lark. Ah, well – Tom had complained about her to the dumb goat often enough. Fennel should have known better.

In Defense, they have another dueling tournament. Tom defeats Daphne once more, this time even more soundly, and feels her opposition to the notion of following him start to degrade along with her pride.

Peryle slips up and calls Harry ‘green-eyes’ in front of Susan, who laughs it off, but the incident leaves Harry jumpy for the rest of the day. Tom watches how his hand keeps going up to where his disguise pendant hangs under his robes. Deception really doesn’t come naturally to Harry.

Between their homework in Dark Studies and Transfigurations, though, there isn’t much time to dwell on it all; moreover, final exams are coming up, as Lily reminds them sternly in letters.

They’re teetering on the edge of spring. Crocuses pop up in the unicorn’s meadow. The weather alternates between gasps of sweet, sunny days and gloomy rainstorms. Tom’s thoughts feel slippery and strange, saturated with drowning faces, storm clouds and the green of unglamoured eyes.

***

They’re in Harry’s room, supposedly practicing Charms, but really just talking. The knowledge that Tom is an actual murderer, not just a murderer-to-be, should change things between them. It doesn’t. Voldemort feels, some days, like a fanciful daydream, a relic conjured from dusty naps in fourth year Divination.

His Tom is now nearly the same age as the diary-Riddle had been, and yet the two have never seemed more separate in Harry’s mind.

“I need your advice, Harry,” Tom announces, leggy and melodramatic, laying half-off of Harry’s bed.

“I _am_ very good at giving advice.” Harry starts up a doodle in the margins of his Care of Magical Creatures notes.

“See,” Tom says, looking at Harry through his eyelashes. “I can’t decide if Dean Thomas is attractive or not. In my head, he’s rather dashing, and then I’ll see him in person and say ‘oh, well he does have rather terrible posture, doesn’t he,’ – and his _teeth_ , Harry, they’re _awful_ – but then in my memory he’s still very good looking. It’s quite the conundrum.”

“Er, in my timeline he started dating Seamus Finnegan at the end of third year… I think they’re an item here, too. Sorry, mate.” He gives a set of sharp canine teeth to the sheep he’s drawing.

“I don’t want to date him or anything. I’m not invested in his relationship status, I just can’t figure out if he’s actually attractive or not. It’s driving me _mad_ , Harry. I need a second opinion.”

For some reason, this line of questioning makes Harry’s heart rate increase unpleasantly. He tries not to be obvious about wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans. “I, er. I don’t find Dean attractive.”

“Huh. He’s got a pretty mind, you know, maybe that’s it,” Tom says, then lapses into thoughtful silence.

Harry relaxes minutely, thinking that maybe this terrible conversation is coming to a close.

“So who _are_ you attracted to? I need to figure out what your baseline is to get an accurate measure.”

Gritting his teeth, Harry gives his sheep bat wings. The little sketch, deciding it’s finished, gnashes its teeth and flaps its new wings in apparent delight. Harry wishes it were real so he could send it after Tom. “Wouldn’t you be better off asking Pansy about this?”

Tom shrugs.

For some reason, Harry thinks of Cedric’s gray eyes and broad smile. “Er – I always thought Cho Chang was quite pretty,” he says doubtfully.

“Who?” Tom frowns.

“She’s a year ahead of us.”

“What House is she in?”

“Raven – no. She might be in Gryffindor now. I’m not sure.”

“Huh,” Tom says broodingly.

Harry goes silent, not wanting to risk Tom reopening the conversation. He doodles more sheep on his Potions notes, and eventually Tom leaves to go hold court in their year’s common room.

***

March bleeds away at an alarming rate. At breakfast a week later, their entire year sits hypnotized by a spirited debate between Lyra, Daphne, and Peryle about the ethics of Dark artifact experimentation.

“Sometimes you have to do things that aren’t morally comfortable for the sake of scientific advancement,” Lyra says, eating grapes by impaling them on the end of a butter knife, then peeling their skin off bit by bit.

Peryle watches with disgust. “I would like to see what you thought about having your _mind dissected_.”

“Excuse me.”

They all look up to see Draco Malfoy, looking perfectly put together in pressed robes, his hair spelled back. His chin is as pointy as ever. Harry will never understand what Henry sees in him.

“Draco,” Tom says warmly. “Good morning.”

“I was actually hoping to speak with you, Tom,” says Malfoy. “I don’t suppose you have plans for this upcoming Hogsmeade weekend?”

Tom looks Malfoy up and down. Harry waits for him to say _yes, the Potters and I are going to go together_ , but instead he says, “as a matter of fact, I do not.”

“Would you care to accompany me?”

Tom darts a glance toward Harry, so quick that he almost misses it. “That sounds delightful, Draco. I’ll be looking forward to it.”

Malfoy smirks at the other Slytherins, then departs with a swagger in his step.

“ _Nice_ one, Riddle!” says Pansy, watching him go. “Uh, sorry, Lyra.”

“Oh, no worries,” Lyra says, chewing vengefully on a strip of grape skin. “Draco is a very attractive man. You should be pleased, Tom.”

“She and Draco were engaged for years before he came out,” Michael tells Harry in an undertone. “She has _feelings_ about it. I can’t ever quite tell what kind of feelings… but they’re there.”

Harry grunts and starts unraveling a croissant. He doesn’t feel hungry anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tom's Google search history be like:
> 
> tasteful murder confession guide  
> how to ask someone about their sexual orientation  
> how to SMOOTHLY ask someone about their sexual orientation  
> how to make people jealous
> 
> Sorry for the wait, lovelies! I hope you enjoyed the chapter <3  
> 🐆


	13. The Precipice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom goes on a date; Harry is displeased. A spring storm gathers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to [TreeDaddyD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreeDaddyD/pseuds/TreeDaddyD) for beta'ing!

“I can just give you a riddle,” says the doorknocker. “There’s no rule saying you can’t just come inside and find your friend. Unlike the rest of the Houses, _Ravenclaw_ is open to anyone with the wit to earn entry.”

Harry winces at the mention of ‘riddles’. “That’s okay. Er, thanks, I guess, but I’ll just wait for him here.”

“You are a strange little snake.”

The door opens, yielding – no one. It closes.

“Hello?”

“Harry? What are you doing here?” says his own voice, muffled slightly.

An invisible hand, swaddled with thin fabric, latches around his wrist. _Of course_. Harry had been wondering where the Invisibility Cloak was in this world.

Henry drags him off to a spiderwebbed stairwell and takes the Cloak off his head, leaving the rest of his body still invisible. “I was off to, er, chaperone Draco. Make sure Tom doesn’t try and pull anything.”

“Tom? Pull what?” Harry asks, momentarily thrown.

“I dunno,” Henry says, and Harry has the impression that he might be invisibly shrugging. “He’s powerful, handsome, and a good liar. I might like him, but I don’t necessarily trust him with Draco’s heart.”

“‘Draco’s heart’? Oh, sweet Merlin, I wouldn’t put it like that… but I agree. I was just going to find you and ask if you wanted to come –” he winces. “If you wanted to come _chaperone_ them with me.”

Henry, nodding determinedly, throws the Cloak over them both. “Let’s do this.”

They speed through the castle, steps perfectly in time despite Henry’s two inches on Harry. The usual shuffling of multiple people under the Cloak is replaced with mechanical synchrony. Harry thinks, not for the first time, of the horrors the twins might have inflicted on the castle if they had access to the Cloak.

They catch up to Malfoy as he’s crossing the Entrance Hall and fall in behind him. Harry considers throwing a nice acne jinx at his stupid face – Malfoy actually looks quite good in a sleek black dress-casual robe, and Harry thinks a pimple on his nose would really pull the outfit together.

Tom is waiting outside, in the same scarlet wool sweater he’d picked out that morning. “How do I look?” he’d asked Harry, spreading his arms and smiling with half his face.

“Red suits you,” Harry had said, thinking of bloody, bloody hands and madness glinting out of a cheekbone-y face.

“Red suits him,” Henry mutters now, sounding rather put out at the prospect.

They follow the crowd out to Hogsmeade, tracking Tom and Malfoy by Malfoy’s obnoxious, snickering laugh.

The date takes them to Honeydukes, first. Henry and Harry wait outside, not wanting to risk someone inside bumping into them and giving up their position.

Harry is thankful for the cover of the Cloak. Henry’s expression, as he watches Tom and Malfoy examining a display of little sugar-spun birds, is very dangerous; Harry can’t imagine his own face is much different.

Malfoy buys Tom a very expensive-looking pack of mango gummies meant to resemble frog eggs. “He doesn’t even like fruity flavors,” Harry informs Henry.

Henry’s face darkens further. “I don’t think they make a very good couple.”

As the pair leaves Honeydukes, Malfoy pauses, looking around, then smirks and reaches for Tom’s hand.

“Terrible couple,” Harry agrees. He feels restlessly sick, like there’s a Hungarian Horntail coiled up in his gut, emitting little tongues of flame whenever Tom smiles at Malfoy.

They follow them on a little walk around downtown instead, close enough to hear the conversation – Tom’s telling Malfoy all about what used to be built where, and how nice the old perfume shop had been.

“Boring-ass motherfucker,” Henry grumbles. “Honestly. And look, Draco’s just lapping it up, the idiot – ugh. Just because he’s good-looking.”

Harry isn’t quite sure what to make of Henry’s anger – he’s used to his ‘temporal clone’ acting a lot more level-headed than this. He offers him a weak pat on the back in solidarity.

“Oh no,” Henry says suddenly. Harry looks up to see their quarries diverting and making for a little teashop with a sign reading ‘Madam Puddifoot’s’. A well of dread pools in Harry’s stomach as he notes the pink trim on the windows and the lacy tablecloths within.

“What _is_ that place?”

Henry ignores the question, pulling him up against the window. Inside, Malfoy leads Tom to the table right up against the window.

“Oh, look, it’s Pansy and Michael,” Harry observes distantly. “Isn’t that nice…”

Tom and Malfoy order drinks from the waitress, then return to their conversation. Tom looks highly amused by something; he keeps leaning closer to Malfoy and smirking. _He’s enjoying himself_ , Harry thinks icily.

The waitress comes back with a teapot that lets out steam in the shape of hearts. Tom pours out a cup for Malfoy first, then himself.

“What a _gentleman_ ,” Henry says. “Honestly. He probably knows Draco gets turned on by politeness. Manipulative, slimy…”

“Henry, I agree that they’re not good together, but really,” Harry murmurs. “It’s just tea, it’s not like –”

Malfoy puts a hand on Tom’s shoulder, and Harry finds his throat closing up, his insides all freezing into a sloshy clump. They lean close again, and Malfoy whispers something in Tom’s ear.

“Oh, well, _fuck_.” Henry takes a step back, pulling out his wand. Harry steps back with him, numb, as Tom starts to kiss Malfoy behind the steamy glass window.

He can’t look away; it’s not a deep kiss, it doesn’t look like there’s any tongue involved, but _Malfoy is touching Tom’s face_.

“I appear to have miscalculated,” Henry says darkly. “So, this is the true price of voyeurism. Dad told me to use the Cloak for mischief, not spying, but never did I imagine…”

Harry can’t stand to stay here much longer, watching this display: Tom has closed his eyes, lips curving into a smirk through the kiss. “C’mon,” he catches Henry’s hand, broom-callused and clammy. “I’ll buy you a Butterbeer.”

***

“I saw you and Draco,” Pansy remarks as they curl up in the private common room that evening. “You looked like you were having a good time.” Then she smiles, tilting her head, and the dragon in Harry stirs.

Tom sinks into his armchair with the satisfaction of a cat in the sun. “I did, Pansy. Thank you.”

“Is he a good kisser?” Harry finds himself saying, more viciously than intended.

Tom’s eyes lock in on him, like he’s surprised to see Harry there. It’s an act – Tom is moving his eyebrows in a way that indicates he’s fishing for a reaction – but it still stings. “Yes, actually.”

“Had a lot of experience with kissing, Tom?” Lyra says, looking uncommonly present.

“For the last time, Lyra: I _haven’t kissed your grandfather_.”

“Well, why ever not?”

Harry finds some solace in the splotchy shade of brick crawling its way across Tom’s neck.

Michael, Daphne, Eliza, and Justin all look rather alarmed at the turn the conversation has taken – Harry realizes that none of them had been at Tom’s little birthday tea. “Do I want to know?” says Daphne.

Calcifer sighs. “Tom was friends with my grandfather back in his, ah, his _wild youth_.”

“Hardly wild.” Tom crosses his legs. “I was _fifteen_. He was a year older. We liked to talk about Runes together. Besides, I hardly think my love life is any of your concern.”

Harry watches incredulously as Tom appears to will his flush back under his skin, returning to his usual perfect composure as he opens a library book. The others return, though haltingly, to their conversations.

“Tell me again about your Patronus memory,” says Lyra, who has been trying to summon her Patronus since that October Defense lesson.

“Yeah, okay,” Harry says. “I’ll go – er, get notes, and we can go over it in the main common room.” Guiltily, he finds himself thankful for the opportunity to get away from Tom.

***

“You’re feuding with Harry again, aren’t you?” Geoff asks, staring mournfully out a window of the Astronomy Tower.

“ _I’m_ hardly feuding with anyone. This is Harry’s doing.”

“And you have no idea why he’s mad at you?”

“I can’t think of any _good_ reason he’d be angry, no.” Tom knows exactly why Harry is angry with him, but it’s a terrible excuse for his behavior. Over the past fortnight, Harry’s coldness towards Tom has just managed to further divide their House. Michael, Pansy, and Lyra have all sided with Harry, which is… revealing. Tom isn’t sure if this indicates a failing on his part to secure their loyalty, or a testament to the power of Harry’s quiet charisma.

There’s a deep concern in Geoff’s hazel eyes.

“You’re going to tell me to apologize, aren’t you…? Geoffrey, I really have no interest in talking to him. Not right now. You know Harry, he’ll cool off at some point.”

“Are we talking about the same Harry? Tom, I don’t think he knows how to let go of _anything_. Least of all some nonsensical grudge.”

Tom reflects on Harry’s endless fixation on the manticore attacks, his grumbling whenever someone mentions Gilderoy Lockhart, and his continual distrust of Pansy and Draco. He has to concede that ‘forgiveness’ is not one of Harry’s strong suits. _A face like a mask, flat and reptilian_. Tom’s nails sink into the meat of his thumb.

“I just think you ought to talk to him. I mean, if you don’t know why he’s mad, what do you have to lose? There’s no reason to ignore a friend if you don’t understand what you’re fighting over.”

Tom makes a low sound in the back of his throat, leaning away. “This isn’t the first time Harry Partridge has acted like this towards me. I see no reason why I should be the one to break the silence this time around.”

“D’you want me to talk to him for you?”

He just laughs emptily. “Oh, Geoffrey, whatever would I do without you?”

***

It’s not all bad; he might be _feuding_ with Harry, but his connections to the other three Houses have never been stronger. The weekly inter-House study sessions have become an excuse to hold court outside of Slytherin. He spends them flanked by Calcifer and Draco, politicking with other fifth years and trying to recapture the ambition that had once fueled him.

Harry hasn’t been coming to the study sessions, and people ask after him. That’s the funny thing about Harry – for all his brooding intensity, he has a certain effortless likeability to him. All the Potters do: even playful Geoffrey has a gravity to him that seems to draw admirers like moths.

So the study sessions are good, and Tom charms his way through the ranks of Henry’s acquaintances. Dean Thomas, who he has decided is _not_ all that attractive, is won over by a few flashed smiles and casual compliments. After he agrees to help tiny, blond Fey Crouch with her Transfigurations homework, she’s his – and a Potions prodigy, so useful to boot. Neville Longbottom from Gryffindor and Elias Clearwater from Hufflepuff fall into step without Tom even needing to charm them.

Tom carries on his facsimile of a relationship with Draco. It’s pleasant enough: Draco has a nice face, he’s clever enough to keep up with Tom, and as the offspring of the Malfoys and Blacks, he’s well placed politically. They’re a good match, and Tom likes being touched, likes the way Draco’s mouth curves when he passes Tom in the hallway.

He’s aware, of course, that the only two times they’ve kissed after Hogsmeade were perfectly calculated to fall within Henry’s sightline; Draco only bothers with Tom when Henry is around. He should have broken it off after Hogsmeade – he’d known, when he agreed to the little date, that Draco just wanted some way to get at Henry.

But Tom’s lonely, and tired, and some days he can imagine that the gray of Draco’s eyes is a shade or two darker. He can pretend Henry’s expression as he looks at them, his speechless, longing misery, is on Harry’s face. That Harry can look at Tom with anything other than the studied blankness he’s adopted since Hogsmeade.

The woods echo with Harry, in the whispering of the oaks and the thestral’s empty eyes and the fire-bright wildflowers springing up in the unicorn’s meadow. He spends hours tracing paths through the Forest with only Fennel by his side, mapping every stream and valley.

Somehow, for all his wanderings, he has never felt so lost.

***

A storm blows in with April, tasting of the sea and sending the trees of the Forest into a mad, thrashing dance.

The Mother comes to Tom when he’s lying alone at the fringe of the unicorn’s clearing, staring up into the tumultuous gray of the sky and longing, senselessly, for rain. Harry had returned from another visit to the Ministry with the fractal scar on his forehead lividly white, a wildness in his eyes that had him snapping at Lyra and sending poor Theodore Nott halfway into a coma when they practiced Stunners in Defense.

“There is a fell breeze blowing, Tom Riddle,” the Mother says. The hair in her mane and tail hangs motionless, seemingly uncaring of the high wind.

“Peryle says we’re coming up on something.” He stretches his hand high above his head, and the shifting sky casts strange shadows on it, brightening patches of shiny scar tissue. “A precipice. Oblivion on both sides. She says she’s afraid.”

“This has been brewing for centuries, Tom. There is nothing to be gained from fearing an inevitability.”

“What is it? What’s coming?”

“A storm of metal. A people breaking a millennium of oaths in a moment. So it was written in the ashes of Rome, and so it will be. When you slipped away, our fate accelerated. We are close now. I fear there is no deviating from this course.”

Tom pushes himself to his feet, standing amidst the sea of swaying grasses. The Mother’s blind stare pins him into a slouching imitation of his normal posture. She seems dimmer than usual.

“The Potter boy, the one you brought here… he is a chaotic factor. He obscures all but the inevitable conclusion.”

“You called him a ‘child of prophecy’.”

“Marked one. Vanquisher. His birth was foretold, his fate ordained from his first breaths. And you took his hand and shattered that destiny.”

Tom clasps his hands behind his back, feeling the cracks running through his right palm.

“No matter,” says the Mother. “None of it will matter, soon enough…” Before him, her sun-white flesh seems to fade. “Beware the lioness.”

He blinks and she’s gone, not so much as a crushed wildflower to show she had ever been there.

_A storm of metal_. Tom had never bothered with Divination, but he feels the truth of those words in his bones.

He’s left brimming with the existential terror that haunts him some nights, when he comes back from the library to a still common room, feeling as insignificant as the shadows of fish moving just beyond the glass.

There’s death on the wind, crisp and impatient. Tom can’t stand the thought of returning to the castle, seeing Harry’s cold eyes and trying to remind himself that he _wants_ Harry’s jealousy.

Harry, _vanquisher_ , chosen by a now-shattered prophecy. It’s fitting, perhaps. Tom remembers Harry looking up at him, careless and fierce, hair dark with melting snow. ‘I think I was born to die in battle,’ he’d said, and it had chilled Tom’s veins, to see the truth of it echoing behind falsely gray eyes.

Tom goes to the Market. No hag dares try to turn him away anymore. He chats with Green Folk and plays checkers with werewolf cubs, half-hoping someone will take offence to the presence of a wizard. No one questions him. He trudges back to the castle, heavier than ever to leave behind the bobbing fireflies and woodsmoke scent of the Market. 

Nightmares stalk Tom that night, much worse than usual. He sees Harry’s face underwater, gray eyes open wide, vast gouts of bubbles leaking from his mouth and making the surface boil.

He steps back, away from those eyes, and finds himself in the Forest – no, not the Forest, the Room of Requirement. The door stands between two illusory trees, taunting him, and Tom moves forward to touch it. A young Orion appears at his side, hand at his wrist. He’s taller than Tom in the dream, though Tom has grown enough in the past almost-year that they should be of the same height.

Orion says something, but all that comes out is bubbles. 

They’re in the real Dark Forest, now, and it’s drowning. The Giant Squid swims between trees, one of its enormous eyes fixing on Tom, and it’s the bright, yellowy color of Death Star’s eyes. Somewhere in the distance, someone is playing a harp, bright triplet notes that vibrate strangely through the water.

“– Tom? Oh, good morning.” Calcifer leans over him, concern in his hooded eyes. “I’m about to leave for an early breakfast. I was worried you’d overslept.”

“Thoughtful of you,” Tom rasps coldly, finding himself shivering and not quite sure why.

Calcifer beats a quick retreat, clearly picking up on Tom’s disinterest in socialization.

Tom drags himself out of bed and into a long, hot shower. His bones feel strange under his skin, his magic jagged and angry. There are days, sometimes, when he goes out to bleed animals to appease his own magic, though he tells himself it’s for the oaks. Today is that kind of a day.

He doesn’t have time for breakfast, which is for the best; he can’t imagine eating right now, not with his stomach in knots and a tight old madness flooding his lungs. His reflection in the bathroom mirror is a stranger, consumed by dark bags below the eyes, skin pale under damp hair. Eyes almost black.

He clothes himself and gathers his bags. He walks in early to Defense, earlier than even Professor Longbottom. Outside, storm clouds still race each other over the mountains. Tom wants to open a window. He doesn’t.

The dragon skeleton high overhead looms, the bones of its wings spread wide. The chains holding it to the ceiling creak, as if in some breeze.

“Oh – good morning, young man,” says a voice from the door. Tom turns his head toward the sound. It takes all his will not to glare. “Professor Alice Longbottom teaches in here, correct?”

“That’s right,” he says guardedly. This man may have once been tall, but age has bent him. He squints at Tom; likely an attempt at a smile.

“Nick Jigger, at your service. Alice is taking a sick day, I’m afraid, so you’ll have to put up with me for today’s lesson.”

How odd. Tom indulges Jigger in a handshake, feeling the ancient man’s skin wrinkle like dry leather under his grip. Something sick writhes within him, and Jigger pulls his hand back as if he’s been shocked, leaving Tom at his desk by the window.

Daphne and Eliza trickle in first, talking softly and snaking loaded glances in his direction. Tom and Susan’s factions come in together in one swollen herd. They seem to sense Tom’s mood, for no one sits directly beside him.

“Good morning, class,” Jigger says. “I’ll be your substitute for today. Professor Longbottom has asked me to deliver a lecture on identifying and destroying Lethifolds. If you’d turn to page 345… Good! Now, the Lethifold dwells in tropical climates, but there have been three recorded attacks by them on British soil over the past century. Can anyone think why that may be? Raise your hands now, children, don’t be shy…”

Tom realizes, suddenly, that Harry is not in class. Neither is Peryle.

The dread rising within him reaches a terrible pitch. He sets his quill down delicately, not wanting to accidentally transfigure it into some twisted creature, as tends to happen when he’s upset around feathers.

“ _Muffliato_ ,” he directs at the substitute, then turns in his chair, finding Susan’s eyes. “Where’s Peryle?”

Susan glances at Jigger, murmuring, “She saw something this morning and went galloping off to the Forest. I know centaurs can be – strange _–_ at times, but she’s never done something like this without explanation. I’m worried.”

“The precipice.”

Susan bites her lip, all the sunlight drained from her. “Maybe.”

Jigger is happily spouting some nonsense about modern creature import regulations, oblivious to their conversation.

Tom’s magic _burns_ under his skin. Loyal Calcifer, two seats to his right, keeps sending him anxious glances. This won’t do; Tom forces himself to breathe, calm himself so he can sort this all through calmly –

A scream.

Not aloud. Etched into the fabric of Tom’s mind, shattering him, pulling him. His entire being snaps to attention towards the Forest. A smoky cloud of thestrals rises up above the trees. All appears calm, but the song of the oaks roars above it all, thrumming through the classroom, gripping its claws around Tom’s heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a shorter chapter than usual -- what was Chapter 13 has been split in two for the sake of narrative flow. Make of that what you will >;3
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! I'd love to hear any predictions you might have in regards to the next few chapters. We're creeping up on the end of Part 2...  
> 🐍


	14. Battle for the Heartwood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the heart of the Forbidden Forest, Harry and Tom fight for their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the magnificent [TreeDaddyD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreeDaddyD/pseuds/TreeDaddyD) for beta'ing!

Tom stands, yew wand in a white-knuckled fist. They all stare at him, but he’s lost the capacity to care.

“I have to go,” he tries to say. He can’t hear himself over the battle cry of the trees.

He has just enough restraint not to shatter a window and leave that way. The storm outside seems to fill him, wind pushing him forward, lightning in his belly, his face a dark thunderhead.

Jigger probably says something, tries to stop him, but Tom’s long stride carries him away before he can assess their faces. In the hallway, he flies into a run, robes flapping behind him, desperation clawing at the walls of his stomach.

He feels like he’s moving through quicksand, caught in a dreamlike panic. The song pulsing through his flesh has taken on an edge of terror. He tastes blood on his lips, but when he spits it comes out clear.

He’s outside now, on the wide field between Hogwarts and the Dark Forest. Fennel waits for him in the shadow of the trees, more luminous than the moon, making the storm overhead seem darker by contrast.

They run to each other. Tom throws himself onto the unicorn’s back and holds tightly to his mane. And then Fennel’s plunging into a gallop, so fast that the wind pulls tears from Tom’s eyes and he has to fling an arm around the unicorn’s neck to not be thrown off.

The Forest seems to bow before their passage, scrub giving way to Fennel’s mad charge. Tom should be afraid, but he’s too swallowed by this sensation of flight, this rabid pummeling race to the oaks, the vibrating fury of his magic.

Fennel vaults over the river like it’s nothing and races up the oak’s hill with supernatural grace.

The earth trembles under his cloven hooves. There’s a battle raging at the crest of the hill. Tom can perceive human grunting, the snap of bowstrings. 

A new noise, now. A bellowing scream, like the pained yell of a housecat amplified tenfold. _The manticore_ , Tom recognizes with a chill. 

The air is thick with the iron and sage smell of the oaks, underlying the heavy ozone scent of Harry’s magic. High above, thestrals make tight, anxious circles in the sky. Tom has never seen this flight pattern from them.

They crest the hill and find themselves halfway too late. Tom swallows hard against the memory of midsummer, of two oaks bleeding out sap, the manticore’s claws bearing down on Harry.

This is so, so much worse than the battle in the birch wood. The oak’s song bellows in Tom’s veins, and he can feel Fennel’s heartbeat through his thick white coat, pounding in concert with his own.

Five oaks are down. The Lichen-Streaked One is among them. Tom doesn’t cry. All he can feel is a hungry anger building behind his ribs, stoking his magic into a tempest. A flock of twisted birds shoot up off the ground around Fennel’s hooves, rocketing forward like arrows.

The manticore stands in the center of the clearing, wings spread protectively over the oaks’ carcasses. Its eyes seem to have healed from Tom’s snake bites, but its cheeks are thick with bubbling scar tissue. Dozens of wizards in cobalt robes, hoods obscuring their faces stand before it. Some are at work on one of the oaks – the Clay-Rooted One – while the rest are engaged in a vicious battle.

Harry’s at the forefront, wand whipping around himself. He’s grown powerful this past year, and with the strength of the grove channeled through him he’s a force of nature unto himself. He conjures flames, pulls electricity down from the storm above, casts impediment jinxes with a beautiful fluidity. The roots of the oaks themselves dance to his will; as Tom watches, an unwary hooded figure is snared and pulled down into the dirt, screaming. Another’s red hair grows out of control and stuffs itself down their throat, choking them into submission.

Surrounding Harry are Peryle and some of her herd, armed with wands and bows. Tom recognizes two of the werewolves in their midst, bearing unpolished wands, snarling. 

A toad the size of a large dog plunges through the fray. It easily shrugs off a spell and leaps at a figure’s neck. Pinned to the ground, the figure is helpless to resist as it plunges impossibly long canine teeth into their throat. More toads, slightly smaller, hop after it – but the figures are wary now. They soon discover the toads’ neck sacks are vulnerable to spellfire.

A centaur falls with a shout. One of the werewolves goes down to a gout of silvery flame.

This is death, Tom thinks. But he’s too full of music and anger. He has no room for fear left in his heart.

The Clay-Rooted One crashes to the forest floor with a noise that ripples through every sinew in his body.

Tom screams.

Wild magic flows from the oaks into him, Fennel as a conduit.

They charge, and the grove twists around them, every tree and wildflower and scrap of moss in the forest bending to Tom. The manticore thumps to the ground, the roots of the oaks and the weight of a thousand other plant species dragging it down. Vines transfigure into pythons. They thrash mindlessly, teeth sinking into the manticore, their fellows, themselves.

Harry turns, that fierce battle-grin stretching across his face. “Tom!”

For a moment, Tom lets himself be swept up in that same fierce joy.

Before he can call back, though, the manticore’s rider is standing. There’s a device held high above their head. Almost too late, Tom recognizes it from their first encounter with the manticore. The manticore’s rider had produced a pulse of magic strong enough to knock Harry out of the sky, crack his head open on the floor of the birchwood, unravel Tom’s animal conjurations –

Tom is ready with a Protego this time, shielding he and Harry and Fennel. The people of the Forest go sprawling; the legion of cloaked wizards, apparently unaffected, press forward.

Tom’s pythons shrivel to dust. The plants he’s summoned recoil from the blast, shrinking back into the soil.

The manticore stumbles back to its feet.

Fennel shakes out his mane and charges. Tom lifts his wand, mind set – he takes his old handkerchief in his right hand, readying himself to throw it as a viper into the mouth of the beast, kill the manticore from inside – but the hooded figures are overwhelming. 

One lands a spell on Fennel’s flank. The unicorn rears in silent agony, dropping Tom to the ground.

He’s surrounded now, tripping over the limbs of _please-not-dead centaurs_ and breathless with the crushing agony of the oaks’ song. Nothing could have prepared him for this horror, all these fresh deaths.

But his opponents are only human. Tom has always been more than human, always _better_. He can overcome this new threat.

A moment’s conjuration has a pack of wolves circling him, growling low in their throats in a fierce counterpoint to the oaken melody. Tom clambers back to his feet and looks out into the hooded group of trespassers, fools who dared to come to this place. They can’t even hear the music… it seems unimaginable, almost, the idea that they might be deaf to the thing vibrating Tom’s core, the notes that are gradually etching themselves into his being. He smothers himself in this arrogance, tries to ignore the mud smeared across his side and the tears starting to pool in his eyes.

The wolves pounce in the same heartbeat as Tom, their jaws seeking faces with the same ease as Tom’s fired cutting jinxes. His magic exalts in the bloodshed; he can hardly think to hate himself.

But his opponents have magic, too, and though one of them falls to a conjured wolf, the others shred his transfigurations, and block his spells, diving forward with curses of their own. Tom pulls more wolves from the ground, wracking his mind for obscure spells to hurl. He dodges like a madman, but it’s impossible to predict the motions of the enemy.

One figure sends a gout of flames his way. Tom jumps away, and the fire instead blackens one of his wolves. Another casts a spell that makes the earth itself buck under Tom’s feet, forcing him to kneel.

They close in, sensing his desperation.

Tom looks around himself and sees the world as it is. He is just a child. Death, always in his mind, the face of a little boy with plain blue eyes, stares at him from the cobalt swarm. A plea for mercy squeezes its way up his esophagus.

He feels wind on the back of his neck and recoils, but it’s just a thestral, swooping down from above. It bellows, and the figures back away for a moment. Tom stumbles to his feet, gasping for air.

Harry leaps off the thestral’s back, casting a shimmering shield that deflects a dense blue bolt of magic. There’s blood in his teeth, now, and he’s favoring his right side, but that rictus grin is still set on his face.

The thestral flings itself into the sky, leaving them back to back. Tom’s terror flakes away, lost in the bright relief of Harry’s proximity. He wonders if Harry’s wand is singing like his, if he, too, can hear phoenix song trilling high above the bass of the oaks, a world away from the tumult of the battle.

“I missed you,” Tom says, knowing his voice will be lost in the clamor. Perhaps Harry is right – perhaps dying in battle would not be so terrible. Heartbeat galloping in his chest, magic flowing from him like a river, his wand an extension of his will –

Tom is hit.

It starts as a mild pain, like a bee sting in his side, and then suddenly it’s his world, an agony that spreads through his body in a flashflood of torment.

He crumples. The last thing he hears is a wail, the taste of ozone thick on his tongue.

***

Tom wakes to leathery stillness.

The light around him is red and fleeting, blurred through his eyelashes. When he reaches out, his fingers find soft flesh.

He tries to sit up, but the motion makes him shiver with dull, hot pain. He retches onto his chest, the pain sharpening with the motion. Something groans, and he stops breathing for a terrified moment before he realizes the source of the noise was himself.

He closes his eyes, taking stock. He’s warm. Back inside the castle, maybe – but no, he can feel the lumpy-soft patchwork of grass under his aching body. He’s in an enclosed space, but somewhere outside.

He’s dying. The thought of it sends icy terror ripping through him, but he’s in too much pain to do anything about it but sob, fat tears that drip, sticky, down the sides of his face. It takes all his self-control not to devolve into heaving; that would surely aggravate the misery of his torso.

All is silent. He hadn’t realized at first. He can’t hear the oaks.

No – not silent. He hadn’t noticed before, but there’s something breathing shallowly in the direction where his fingers had found flesh.

“Hah – Harh –”

“Tom?” It’s groggy, tight, but it’s Harry.

Tom feels suddenly, stupidly ashamed of the vomit that he can feel seeping into his front. “I – hghh –”

“No, hush, hush,” Harry says, and a moment later there’s light, and cold, and Tom tries to recoil but all he can do is squeeze his eyes shut.

It’s raining. The water washes away his tears, his blood, leaving him chilled and numb. 

Harry peels his robes away from his torso. “Fuck. Fuck. What even –”

Tom tries to contort slightly, move his neck so he can see what’s wrong with him. His pain explodes with the motion. Darkness erodes his vision.

***

Tom lapses in and out of consciousness, a cycle of blurry disorientation. He’s back in the warm red tent from before. He dreams he’s a tree, rooted to the earth from skull to spine. The agony in his chest is just his trunk growing, stretching up to the sun.

The silence haunts him. All he can hear is the patter of rain, the erratic thump of his own heartbeat, Harry’s stirring.

Night falls at some point, reducing the world to the harsh beam of Harry’s Lumos. He tries to speak, but Harry hushes him and drips cold water down his throat.

The pain is softer now. Moving feels less like tearing himself to pieces. “Hgh – Harry?” he chokes out.

The light at the tip of Harry’s wand flares to life again.

“How am I – do you know healing magic? I sh – should –” _I should be dead_.

“They hit you with something that fucked up your heart, I think – I, Tom, I thought you were dead. The oaks, they saved you, but I think your magic tried to reject the, er. Anyway, you were magically exhausted, writhing – I got you away…”

“What happened? The oaks –”

“I killed the manticore, and I was going for the rider, but they had reinforcements come in from somewhere, on brooms… I was hit by something, I knew I only had a minute or so of consciousness. I grabbed you, took shelter under the manticore’s body.”

Tom pushes himself up, wincing, but finds he can move without feeling like his heart is going to give out. “The oaks?”

“Tom –”

He seizes the side of the tent – he now realizes it’s the leathery flap of the manticore’s wing – and pulls it up to reveal the wet, empty darkness outside.

“They’re gone,” Harry says lowly. “They took them all away.”

Tom keens, breathless. “How could you let them? How –”

“Tom –”

“Where – who –”

“You need to rest. Please. Let’s just… wait until the sun is in the sky again.”

Tom doesn’t answer; he’s touching his bare chest. The skin feels strange. Not like skin at all.

Harry’s wand goes out. Tom lets the manticore’s wing fall back to earth, and finds that the last thing he wants to do is to sort through this all now. He curls up next to Harry and lets his mind fall away into the abyss of unconsciousness.

***

Tom feels unsteady on his feet. He leans against Harry, who hooks their arms together.

The oaks – there had been forty-nine of them, Tom had counted that winter – have all been ripped away, some plucked clean from the soil, leaving dark gashes in the earth, others bisected at the trunk, like the killings in the birch wood. The grove has been reduced to a bloody wound, a slash across the neck of a corpse.

The sky looms overhead, presiding mockingly over the corpse-strewn remnants of the Forest’s heart. Dead centaurs, clustered like confused offerings around the cracked standing stone in the grove’s center. A dozen of the blue-cloaked witches and wizards, faces distorted by death and wet with rain. Great warty, toothy toads, the largest with its guts spilling from its mouth, diamonds glinting on its webbed digits.

Tom falls to the ruined forest floor, spitting bile into the stringy grass. The pain in his chest starts up again, and he finds himself unable to rise, curled around himself, feeling the silence press down on his lungs.

Harry crouches next to him, touching his left shoulder, and the pain begins to ease. Tom forces himself out of the fetal position, but doesn’t rise.

Now he can see the ruin of his chest. His right hand reaches up to hover over it, afraid to touch. Plant matter twined with flesh, as scaly as tree bark. “Harry? I – what is this?”

“I told you – you were hit with a spell that targeted your heart, I think. It was red, had sort of a misty look to it.”

“Heart-stopper,” Tom rattles off numbly. “Tricky to perform – requires a bit of anatomical knowledge to pull off the intent. But extremely effective: punctures most shields, almost impossible to survive if left untreated for longer than a couple seconds.”

“Sounds like the Killing Curse,” Harry says, hand going up to touch his bangs. He looks ghoulish in the cloudy dawn, all the color and light drained from his face. Only his eyes still seem alive, reflecting the sky with inhuman luminescence.

Tom swallows yearning. “Not half as nasty as the Avada, I think. There’s quite the gap between near-certain death and a spell that turns people into corpses.”

Harry smiles that crooked smile of his, staring out over the desecrated field. He stands and moves towards the fallen figure nearest to him, removing the hood and staring down into the face, as if memorizing it. “They didn’t even bother collecting their bodies.”

“They might still come back… Harry, we can’t linger here.”

“What, you want to just go back to the castle? Tom, I don’t want to have to explain your injuries to anyone. I don’t care if we’re missing class.”

“I – we can go to the unicorns. They’ll keep us safe. This place –” A shiver rips through Tom as he considers the cracked runestone, the centaurs fallen like abandoned toys, the sky consuming it all. “This place isn’t for the living, not anymore.”

Harry licks chapped lips and nods, holding out his hand. Tom takes it gratefully. He hasn’t the magic for a warming spell to ward off the chill on his exposed torso, nor the strength to walk unsupported.

Fennel is waiting for them at the bottom of the hill, where the usual gnarled pines of the forest grow strong overhead. He bends spindly legs, accepting the two of them onto his back without any sign of strain. Harry sits behind Tom, arms around his bare waist, but the pain in his chest is so exacerbated by the shuddering rhythm of the ride that he can’t properly enjoy it.

By the time they arrive in the unicorn’s wildflower meadow, he’s barely conscious. Harry lays him out on the ground and he spends a long moment just breathing, until the world stops spinning and each heartbeat stops feeling like his last.

“So I have a tree growing out of me,” he says conversationally. “I must say, I don’t care for the experience.”

“You don’t have a tree growing out of you. It looks more like… like you’ve always been a tree, but you’re only now sprouting bark.”

“Harry, I can feel it in my bloody chest. Christ. It’s like there’s some other entity in my body, operating my heart.”

“Muggles have made machines that do that for people who need it… it’s saving your life, Tom, I really don’t think you have much room for complaining.”

“I’d like to see how you would like having a tree manually pump your blood,” Tom grumbles, because it really is uncomfortable. He wipes his eyes, to no avail. He thinks he’s been crying since he woke up to the silence of the oaks.

“Tom – what does it mean? This is so much bigger than we could have imagined. Why would they kill all the oaks?”

Tom rests his scarred hand over his oaken heart, letting his eyes slip closed, opening himself to the chill of the spring wind. “I was wrong before, about the secret of the heartwood. Someone knows. They must.”

“You said… an army of trees.”

“Yes. A force as has not been seen since Camelot.”

Harry goes silent, leaving Tom to stare up at the sky and wonder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:D
> 
> I did some art for this chapter over on my tumblr, if ya want to check it out! It's [Tom and Fennel](https://relic--crown.tumblr.com/post/620302454699999232/new-chapter-of-the-incantation-of-the).  
> 🐦


	15. Rider Unmasked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom and Harry begin to recover from the horror of the Forest's desolation – but the manticore's rider is hiding closer to home than they imagined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the wonderful [TreeDaddyD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreeDaddyD/pseuds/TreeDaddyD) for beta'ing!

There’s a healing quality to the unicorns’ mere presence. When Fennel and two of his friends come to graze by Harry and Tom, Harry finds the little cuts on his arms fading, the wound on his leg knitting back together. His mind, too, feels more at ease. He can look back on the events of yesterday – choking the manticore with its own mane; Filobrix felled by a deep green spell; the shattered remains of the blue-cloaked regiment, some dead by his own hand – and feel a fragile acceptance webbing its way around the memories.

“It’s Friday,” Tom muses. “We should be in Charms now. I just _walked_ right out of Defense yesterday, can you imagine…? There was a substitute teacher, Nick Jigger. At least we didn’t miss out on any learning – I mean, I doubt Longbottom’s going to expect us to understand the intricacies of Lethifold migrations for the exam…”

He’s rambling. Residual terror, Harry assumes; Hermione had acted similarly in the wake of some of their adventures. He’s just glad that Tom saved this breakdown for the aftermath of the fight. The memory of Tom collapsing into a net of knotted roots, eyes wider and darker than Harry had ever seen them, flashes through him. He feels a sympathetic pang touch his own heart.

“Where was Peryle?” Tom says. “Please don’t tell me –”

“She ran when the reinforcements arrived. I yelled at everyone to get out of there. Most obeyed.”

Tom exhales in relief.

Harry bites his lip. “Tom, it occurs to me that I’ve, er, that I’ve been rather cold to you over this past month. It was – hard – to see you with Draco Malfoy. See, when I used to know him, he was a very cruel person, and I had trouble dealing with the reality of your… _feelings_ for him.”

There is a long beat of silence, then, “are you apologizing to me, Harry Potter?”

“Keep that up and I’ll retract it, Riddle.”

“It’s just… Geoffrey would be so _proud_ of you.”

Harry touches his disguise pendant.

“Correct me if I’m wrong. Your justification for _not speaking to me for over a month_ is that you had trouble coming to terms with the idea that dear Draco might have some redeemable qualities? That’s _enormously_ petty.”

Harry shifts. “I dunno,” he says. It’s an honest enough answer.

Tom scoffs, but not prying is an acceptance all on its own.

They spend the day recovering. The unicorns bring them berries and roots and mushrooms to eat, and sweet spring water to drink. Some of the skeletal cast to Tom’s face fades a bit, but he’s still worryingly pale, even after enough of his magic has returned to allow for some warming charms and a conjured cloak.

As the sun arcs back down to the horizon, they decide to return to Hogwarts rather than spend another night in the woods. It’s a long walk back; their time with the unicorns may have done wonders for Tom, but his body still seems at war with the oaken construction spiraling around his heart. They stop every few minutes to let him recover his breath.

By the time they’ve finally stumbled out of the Forest, onto the bank of the Black Lake, Tom is leaning heavily on Harry’s shoulder, looking wild with pain and exhaustion. “I’m _fine_ ,” he keeps saying, but they both know he’s lying.

Everyone’s at dinner. Harry can’t imagine wandering into the Great Hall in the state they’re in; they’d be whisked off to Pomfrey without preamble. Tom is obstinate that no one is to know of the oaks, even in death. Harry agrees; the idea of adults poking around the trees’ graveyard makes him feel ill.

Narrowly dodging a crowd of chattering younger Gryffindors and a swooping Peeves, they make their way down to the kitchens. The elves give them cups of hot cocoa and great steaming plates of spaghetti. Tom starts to look a bit less like a reanimated cadaver.

Deeming each other fit to make semi-believable excuses, they slip off back to the dungeons. Harry spends nearly half an hour in the shower, pulls on his old Weasley jumper, and swaddles himself in the Slytherin quilt from Lily and James.

He finds Tom on his bed, taking up far less space than usual, eyes like windows to a starless sky. As Harry curls up next to him, he comes back to earth.

Their eyes lock for a long moment, but neither of them can find words. Harry leans against Tom instead, resting his cheek against Tom’s bony shoulder.

***

They don’t go into the Forest anymore. They don’t even look at it, not really; “it’s dead,” Tom whispers hollowly, as they look out over the trees from the library window, and Harry can’t help but agree. Without the oaks, it’s not really the Forest anymore. Just a collection of trees.

The thought of it makes him feel panicked and empty, all at once.

The other Slytherins know something big happened that stormy Thursday in April. Peryle, who had apparently stampeded back into the common room soaked in rain and tears, hexes anyone who pries too hard. After Lyra spends Monday toothless and moose-horned, everyone backs off.

Susan sighs heavily when she first finds Harry and Tom comparing Dark Studies lecture notes in the little common, then throws up her hands and leaves. “I was destabilized without you,” Tom explains with an air of playful secrecy. “She thought she’d have a better chance next year if we stayed fighting.”

“I don’t think I could have stayed mad through the whole summer,” Harry says, shuffling his papers and ignoring Tom’s little snort of disbelief. “Did you understand what Snape said about the impact of non-magical violence on artifacts? He said to read the textbook for a more in-depth look, but…”

Tom beams, launching into an explanation that would make McGonagall proud.

The next week, Peryle, seemingly reminded of her mortality, kisses Susan in the middle of the common room. Susan is cheered by this development. She’s always been like a sun unto herself, but when she’s with Peryle, her luminescence is amplified tenfold. The two of them become like a bright pair of lightning bugs circling each other in the aftermath of the wood’s ruin, and the joy is infectious. Even Daphne, who despises Susan, and Tom, gloomy in the wake of the oaks’ deaths, seem cheered.

There’s still a darkness coming. Harry feels the absence of the oaks’ song like a knife in his side. Still, their little common room, with its plush armchairs and expansive view of the lake, is an island of laughter and pillow fights, ghost stories and gentle pranks. Susan and Daphne even appear to have brokered a temporary truce.

Whatever relationship there had been between Tom and Draco evaporates seemingly overnight, and Henry delivers Tom an apology far more graceful than Harry had been able to muster. Tom forgives him easily, saying, “you know as well as I do that he only ever had eyes for you.”

This makes Henry flush brightly, to Harry’s confusion. He doesn’t dwell on it long, though; he’s too thankful for the reestablishment of peace between the three of them. Harry’s relationship with Henry is the strangest friendship he’s ever had. The two of them are simultaneously too similar and too different. Left alone, their conversations are dominated by explosive tangents and fragile silences; Tom acts as a stabilizing presence.

Each morning, Harry and Tom quietly scan the _Daily Prophet_ ’s obituaries for any mention of missing wizards, searching for the identities of the oak-killers. They find no suspicious deaths: just victims of duels gone wrong; Ministry officials killed in an explosion in the Department of Mysteries; one case of a man being eaten alive by a couch – “this is what happens when you don’t take good care of your leather,” Tom tsks, the corner of his mouth twitching – and the usual old age.

And once that lead has been exhausted – well. Neither of them are eager to venture into the Forest again, and they have finals to study for.

They keep themselves distracted. Harry throws himself into Quidditch, while Tom presses Babbling into an independent Ancient Runes study that Harry finds completely incomprehensible. They take up the project of trying to mold Harry’s old watch into a Dark artifact, but find little success. Tom starts looting the library for books on spell creation, though he doesn’t tell Harry why.

Before they know it, the weather is turning. Soon they’re all studying together out by the lake, Houses ignored in a way that no one had ever managed in Harry’s timeline.

Harry teases Peryle about her longing glances towards her girlfriend, and the centaur just laughs and blushes, and says no more about prophecies. Professor Longbottom calls him ‘exemplary’ and starts giving him lessons before class, teaching him how to concentrate his magic for important spells and how to know to hold off and save his power.

“You could be quite the Auror, Mister Partridge,” she tells him one day, and he holds a little pinprick of glowing pride in his chest for the rest of the week.

Bright-haired Fey Crouch tutors him in Potions. She laughs when he screws up, but always tells him precisely what he’s doing wrong and how to fix it. Henry teaches him tricks for reading, so he can retain information and stop words from swimming aimlessly around the page.

“It’s funny,” Harry tells Tom as they’re running through practice questions for their Charms written exam. “I think this is the most academic I’ve ever been.”

“I can tell,” Tom says drily. “One might almost think you’d never opened a book in your life – look, you’ve spelled ‘transition’ wrong, honestly…”

“I didn’t say I was _suited_ for it.”

“For essay writing? Certainly not. But I think you’ve got a good head for numbers. Shame you passed on taking Arithmancy.”

Harry scoffs, but he’s secretly pleased.

“Oh, Harry, that reminds me! I need your help with something – Geoffrey’s birthday is next month, you see…”

***

On the second of June, Pansy finds them in an abandoned classroom and declares, “it’s far too muggy for studying. Let’s do something fun!”

Harry wipes soot off his brow and frowns at her. “What makes you think I know _anything_ about fun?”

“You seem to be in the process of destroying the ceiling, cousin dearest. That’s much more fun than the Dark Studies review Michael and Lyra are up to.”

Harry makes a face, as Tom has noticed he tends to whenever Pansy calls him ‘cousin.’ “Well. That’s hardly on purpose,” he says with a glance up at the blackened ceiling.

Tom unfurls from his chair in the corner. “Pansy, if you’re looking to cool down, you’d be better off jumping in the lake than bothering us.”

“Oh, don’t be rude, Tom. Why are you blowing holes in the ceiling, anyway?”

Harry darts Tom a questioning look.

Tom sighs. “We’re trying to make a spell.” 

“Oh! But isn’t that dreadfully complicated?”

“It _shouldn’t_ be,” Tom says reluctantly. “Not between my skill with Runes and Harry’s… you know.”

Pansy nods slowly. “What’s it going to be a spell for?”

Harry twirls his wand and ignites a beam of light extending out about three feet from its tip. “Lightsaber,” he says shortly, demonstrating by slicing a chair in two.

“Um, okay then. But you can already do it – why would you need a spell?”

“It’s meant to be a gift,” Tom says, scanning over his calculations again. “We want to make it so Harry’s not the only person who can use it. Here, if you _must_ stick around, maybe you can help us figure out what’s going wrong – Harry, would you?”

Harry’s saber flicks out. He points his wand carefully up towards the ceiling, away from Pansy and Tom, and recites, “ _Force be with you_.”

A blast of heat bursts out of the tip of his wand, further blackening the ceiling.

“Oh – that’s not ideal, is it? Well, at least it could be useful…”

One of the upside-down desks in the corner flips itself over and starts a crab shuffle around the room. A muscle under Tom’s eye twitches. “Pansy? Either be helpful or leave.” The crab-desk clicks its pincers menacingly. “Ah – _please_.”

“Rather cross today, isn’t he?” Pansy asks Harry in what she must think is an undertone.

Tom wants badly to hex her. He _is_ rather cross – his half-wooden heart hasn’t performed well in the summer heat, and he’s been short of breath all morning. Worse, Geoff’s birthday is in two days, and at this rate the lightsaber spell isn’t going to be ready.

Another crab spawns in the dusty corner. Tom tries to perform one of the breathing exercises Harry taught him.

Harry, seeming to notice one of the desk-crabs, says, “Pansy, he does have a point. We might not be studying, but we’re trying to concentrate. I, er, I think Ron and some of the others were doing some sort of mock Quidditch game? They’d be happy to have you.”

Pansy leaves, though she’s clearly not pleased about it.

“She doesn’t respect me,” Tom snarls as the door clicks closed. “None of them do.”

“What are you talking about? They’d do anything for you, all of them. You _know_ that, Tom.”

“This is what comes of _friendship_. They think they can just – just stick around when I tell them to scamper? My old associates would never have _dared_.”

Harry is giving him that old _look_ , eyes an unruffled gray. “Love is a stronger motivator than fear. Just because fear’s easier to earn doesn’t mean it’s a better thing to have instilled in your militia-to-be.”

“I thought you were against militias,” Tom says, feeling his anger puff away. The first crab falls onto its side, becoming just a table once more. Harry doesn’t flinch at the sharp noise of it clunking to the ground.

“That was before.”

Tom’s hand goes to his chest, feeling the ridged bark under his shirt. He’s trying not to get in the habit of touching it – the last thing he wants is for someone to notice and start asking questions. “We will have our revenge,” he vows.

“Yeah, sure. Through the power of friendship.” Harry snickers, bisecting another chair with his conjured lightsaber.

“Idiot,” Tom says fondly. “Here, scoot over, I’m going to sketch the runes out on the floor. I think it’ll be easier to see where we’re going wrong if we can have a look at things up close…”

***

They plan to ambush Geoff on his way down from Gryffindor Tower. The whole thing is Harry’s idea, of course – Tom is embarrassed to admit he doesn’t know the precise location of the Gryffindor common room.

They lurk by a portrait of a voluminous woman. She recognizes Tom as ‘that boy the ghosts are always talking about – oh, and I can certainly see _why_.’ Harry seems more than happy to engage her in conversation, but Tom cuts him off and Disillusions them both.

A string of Gryffindors stumble out on their way to breakfast. Tom sits quietly against the wall and entertains himself by invisibly untying their shoelaces. ‘ _Juvenile,_ ’ Pansy whispers somewhere in his mind. He ignores her.

Eventually, Geoff stumbles through the portrait hole, glowing, surrounded by friends, Lily’s dimple in his cheeks. Tom realizes abruptly that their planning had amounted to nothing more than thinking an ambush might be fun.

A hand seizes him, hauling him to his feet. He blinks twice, sharply, before he can recognize Harry through his Disillusionment. “What’s the plan, then?” Tom asks lazily, in the way he knows rankles Harry.

“We’re, er, going to follow him around and wait for a good moment for a dramatic reveal.”

“Excellent. Does _going to class_ factor into our master strategy anywhere?”

“Oh, fine – we’ll just snatch him up during breakfast.”

“In dramatic fashion?”

“Yes, Tom. In _dramatic fashion_.”

They eat a hurried breakfast, then set about lurking by the doorway and watching Geoff and his friends. Calcifer comes and lurks with them, and eventually so do Lyra, Pansy, and Justin. At that point it’s less of a _lurk_ and more a loiter. Tom finds, though, he doesn’t mind the company, so loiter they do.

Geoffrey gets a lot of birthday mail, and as such lingers over his breakfast. One letter explodes into a storm of scarlet-and-gold confetti.

“Sirius, probably,” Harry says, looking amused. “Oh, wait, I’ve got an idea. Tom, d’you have a quill and some parchment?”

Tom doesn’t, but Lyra offers up a wrinkled square of paper. Harry scribbles out a quick note, then carefully folds it into an airplane and sends it winging over to Gryffindor.

“That had best have been some kind of _Star Wars_ reference,” Tom says sternly.

“It’s not.”

Geoff unfolds the little plane, grins, and looks up at them. Within a minute, he’s waving his friends off and slouching over to Harry and Tom.

“You all can go do something productive now,” Tom tells their fellow loiterers. “We’re not actually doing anything nefarious.”

“Family business?” says Lyra, monitoring Geoff’s approach. “See, Cal? I told you they didn’t need _backup_.”

“Better safe than sorry.”

Pansy leads them away. Tom hears her say, “Do any of you know what a ‘lightsaber’ is?”

“Obedience and initiative,” Harry says knowingly, watching the clump of Slytherins wander off to graze on strawberries. “See? Power of friendship.”

“Um,” says Geoff from behind them. “I don’t think that’s right, Harry.”

“Oh, Geoff – hi. Happy birthday!”

“Have you made me pumpkin bread?”

Harry’s face falls. “No.”

“We have something even better,” Tom interrupts. “Come with and we’ll show you.”

They find a new abandoned classroom, this one unscorched and outfitted with windows overlooking the mountains. Tom tries not to think about the too-still Forest, smudgy and formless on the other side of the lake.

Geoff pulls up an old chair, sitting on it backwards, unbothered by the dust. Tom casts _Scourgify_ on a desk and perches on its edge, resting his chin on his hand.

“Harry? A demonstration, if you will.”

“Right. So, Geoff, the present is really a lesson. Here, look – _Force be with you!_ ”

A great blue laser erupts from Harry’s wand, crackling dangerously. Geoff falls off his chair. “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, scrambling to his feet and fumbling his wand into his hands. “And you will be teaching it to me immediately. I have fifteen minutes until I have to be in Transfigurations, or Uncle Remus will flay me. Let’s do this.”

***

Exams sneak up on Harry, the same way they do every year. There’s a timeless quality to Hogwarts in June: the invitation to soak up the sun, bask like the squid, lose your days to endless games in the common room, fall asleep to the sound of old Muggle jazz music.

The final Quidditch game of the year is against Gryffindor, and it’s fun just to be on the same pitch as Geoff and Ron. They play for around half an hour before Harry finally spots the snitch. Cho, this timeline's Gryffindor seeker, doesn’t stand a chance.

They all do still study dutifully, of course; “this is _Slytherin_ ,” as Susan puts it, “and we are _so bloody close_ to the end, people, the Cup is in sight, this is not the time to start slacking off.” She says this all while staring very meaningfully at Michael and Pansy, who everyone keeps finding in strange corners of the school, lips locked.

Harry’s studying mostly ends up consisting of either firing spells _en masse_ at some unfortunate conjured dummy or having Tom read aloud to him, which is a favor he can only secure for around an hour a day if he’s lucky. It helps, though. A lot. Harry’s auditory recall, it turns out, is vastly superior to his visual.

“I think I actually understood some of that,” he tells Tom as they come out of one of Slughorn’s lectures, the week before exams.

Tom laughs at him, but not really in a mean way. Tom-with-his-guard-down laughs at a lot of things, and for a while, Harry just thought he was missing the joke. ‘Coping mechanism’, that’s what Hermione would call it. Harry doesn’t mind it anymore. He likes Tom’s laugh, when it’s the normal one, at least, not the cold, wild thing he pulls out when he’s angry.

And, just like that, exams are upon them.

Harry tries his best to be nervous, he really does. Everyone around him is panicking, which means that’s the fashionable thing to do. All he can feel, though, as he watches Michael flail about their room, declaring that he doesn’t know _shit_ about Charms, anyway, is vague amusement. He wonders what the Ravenclaws are up to, in their high tower, wonders if this Hermione gets as frazzled around exam season as his Hermione used to.

It helps his nerves that he’s been spending so much time around Tom, who seems bored with it all and tells Harry, “you’ll be fine as long as you don’t lose your head. Well, except for in History. You’re terrible at History. Perhaps if you’re lucky, you’ll scrape an A.” This sort of statement shouldn't be comforting, but it is anyway.

So, as they pour up to the Dark Studies classroom for their written exam, the Slytherins are a jittery mess. Harry does his best to give Peryle a pep talk while Tom busies himself looking tall and very smug, erasing any notion that he is anything but a great misery-loving leech.

Harry sits near the front of the classroom, suddenly very aware of the fact that in his world, he would be expected to go sit in the Great Hall and perform his O.W.L.s. He wonders if those, perhaps, would be enough to reduce him to a nervous wreck like he sees in his classmates.

The written portion is viciously difficult, the same as Snape’s exams always are. Harry chews on the end of his quill and debates the answers to questions like, ‘ _Over the span of ten years, is a mood-altering charm or a cosmetic charm more likely to morph into a Dark artifact?_ ’ and ‘ _Explain, in detail, each of the seven categories of Dark magic. Name a spell in each category that subverts qualities usually ascribed to its grouping_ ’.

“I think that went quite well,” Tom says as they file out, ducking a retaliatory stinging hex from Pansy.

“That was a complete disaster,” Susan corrects. “I’m just glad we don’t have to do a practical for that class.”

Lyra hums in agreement. “Anyone have more exams left today?”

“Ancient Runes,” Calcifer says dismally.

“Harry, are you free to run a Defense review?” says Lyra. “I don’t feel confident in my practical skills yet – I hadn’t realized we’ve that test _tomorrow_ , I thought it was for Thursday…”

***

It is with some horror that Harry admits to himself that part of him has been looking forward to the Defense exam. He’s excited to prove himself in his best subject, excited to earn a nice mark to bring home to Lily and James.

The day of the test dawns bright, the sky full of scudding clouds carried along by a brisk wind. Harry wakes up early and goes for a nice walk around the Black Lake, humming to himself to ward away the unsettling silence of the Forest. Tom hasn’t been singing lately, and Harry misses it.

He lingers by the edge of the Forest before he goes back inside, waiting, perhaps, for a centaur to canter out just to say ‘hi’, or perhaps for a glimpse of a firefly bobbing in the dark. There is nothing. Harry thinks of the manticore’s bones, decaying in the grove where the Forest’s heart had been, its eyes picked away by scavengers.

He goes back inside.

The Defense classroom is dreadfully dry and stuffy. The Slytherins sit in rows, waiting in drowsy silence for the written test to begin. Harry is just starting to think that someone ought to open a window when Professor Longbottom comes in, exams in hand.

Everyone straightens up, eager, like hunting dogs. Sweat makes Harry’s collar miserably sticky. He wonders where his enthusiasm from this morning had gone.

‘ _Describe how best to slay a manticore_ ’ the first question reads. Harry blinks and reads it again, and finds he was mistaken: ‘ _Describe how best to serve malaclaw_ ,’ which makes still less sense.

He touches his quill to his lips and tries to read the question over, but he keeps thinking of the manticore, wondering if its skull is exposed yet, whether it will be bleached out by the same terrible dry heat that has gripped the castle.

Alice Longbottom paces at the front of the classroom, steps long and measured. Predatory.

Something clicks in Harry’s mind, a thousand little hints resolving into a picture.

He feels very awake suddenly, heartbeat galloping in his temples. He raises his hand.

“Mister Potter? Can this wait until after the exam?”

“I’m terribly sorry, professor, but I’m having some difficulty reading the first question – there’s a spot of ink here, see – does this word say ‘manticore’?”

Tom’s head snaps up, eyes darting between Harry and Longbottom, widening with realization. His hand goes to his right sleeve, where Harry knows he’s hidden his wand. His tongue flickers out, snakelike, and he offers Harry an infinitesimal nod.

“It’s meant to say ‘malaclaw’,” Longbottom tells him, slowly.

Harry’s hand goes to his wand in his pocket.

The chains holding the dragon’s skeleton to the ceiling scream.

Longbottom casts a shield just before Harry’s Stunner can hit her in the chest.

Susan screams as Peryle snatches her up, moving her out of the way as the dragon, now growing thick bands of muscle and scales, crashes to the floor, eyes glowing red in their sockets and sparking like embers.

Tom laughs then, high and terrible. Their classmates flee to the corners of the room to get out of the range of the reanimated dragon’s terrible, lashing tail as it advances on Longbottom.

Harry throws more spells, dodges the ones Longbottom hurls back, and feels something within him going first hot, then deadly cold as he watches her face contort, like some terrible imitation of Neville.

She summons three lions to keep the dragon busy, and sends a long line of flame at Tom. Harry aims cutting curses at the lions, and increases the tempo of his offense, but he’s too wary to go all out – she had shown, in the last two times they’d fought, that she could banish conjurations in that pulse of magic.

It’s even hotter in the classroom, now. The fire on Tom’s desk has spread to the floor. Tom stands in the middle of the flames, hair lank with sweat, eyes dark with pain, right hand over his heart while his left holds a trembling wand out to command the dragon.

Harry casts the strongest shield he can muster, quenching the fire with a long few seconds of _Augumenti_. As the wounds on the dragon’s neck and chest heal, it catches one of the lions in its great toothy maw, and hurls the dissolving carcass towards Longbottom.

In the meantime, Longbottom concentrates her efforts on Tom, perhaps sensing the weakness of his artificial heart. He catches a blasting spell on the tip of his wand, redirecting it towards the ceiling.

The windows explode, filling the room with knifelike shards and a breath of wind.

Longbottom takes a step forward through the deluge of glass. A spell flies towards Harry, red and misty –

Someone tackles Harry to the ground.

“ _Pansy_? Why –”

But she’s already scrambling to her feet, joining the other Slytherins. The explosion of the windows seems to have woken them all up from a shocked stupor. Harry stares, breathless – even without knowing the reason for this conflict, the other Slytherins have joined the battle against their professor.

_The power of friendship_ , Harry thinks hysterically. 

Daphne sets about summoning one of her room-sized storms while Susan and Peryle ride together through the classroom, sending curses towards Longbottom. Lyra races towards the dragon, climbing onto its back.

Longbottom conjures a great rippling shield wall that scatters all their spells, but it’s clear that she can’t stand against this many of them. Harry had thought, once, that Slytherins were cowards. Never again.

“ _Expelliarmus_ ,” Harry growls, concentrating his power into a single point, just like Longbottom had taught him.

The shield shatters, and Longbottom is instantly hit by a binding spell from Theodore and a Jelly-Legs jinx from Calcifer. They all surround her, wary, watching with grim fascination as their professor twitches in the conjured ropes.

Tom steps out before them, staring down at Longbottom. “You killed the oaks,” he says, voice starting low and going very high as his control slips. “ _You killed my Forest_.”

She raises her gentle face, sky-blue eyes gone flinty. “It was for the _greater good_. I’ll explain, if you would just let me go – we’re trying to do right by you children.”

The desks around the room, scattered by Daphne’s storm, take on the form of tall, dark horses, horns jutting unevenly from their foreheads. They circle, menacing, and the Slytherins huddle closer together.

“No,” Tom says.

Longbottom’s eyes flick nervously between the crooked horses and the still-looming dragon. “Don’t be unreasonable, Mister Riddle.”

Tom stalks forward, wand trained on her forehead. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t _destroy_ you.”

“There are tides moving in the world that you can’t comprehend, boy. You’ve seen it. You know you’re out of your depth, here… it doesn’t have to be that way. The Minister doesn’t want to end you, but you’ve been walking a difficult line.” She smiles with a plastic compassion that twists Harry’s gut. “If you knew even half of what the Unspeakables know about you… but never mind that now. This is a chance to redeem yourself, Tom.”

Tom’s wand shakes, just slightly. “What are you _talking_ about?” There’s panic in his voice. The un-horses circling them morph into great jagged things, long-legged, with manes like the manticore. Their eyes burn as red as the dragon’s.

“It’s going to be okay, Tom,” Longbottom says gently. “We’ll just talk this out, and you can finally understand…”

Harry steps forward to stand by Tom. He barely recognizes his own voice as he says, fiercely, “the Unspeakables know _nothing_ about him.”

“Of all people, you should know how untrue that is, Harry _Partridge_. And surely Tom suspects – he knows the burden he is to bear. He knows the potential for,” she looks around again at the terrible once-tables, “the potential for monsterhood that slumbers within him.”

Tom’s wand hand falls limp, and Longbottom smiles the smile she used to give Harry before class, when he’d stop by just to chat about Defense. Warm, and small, and the littlest bit surprised.

“Haven’t you ever wondered, Tom, why Harry is the way he is? Who do you _think_ orphaned him?”

“You know nothing about him!” Harry roars. “You know nothing about _me_.”

Longbottom smiles again, sweet as ever, and Harry finds himself breathless with rage.

“ _Obliviate_ ,” he chokes out. The incantation tears itself from him messily, raggedly, but the resulting stream of magic is anything but faint.

_Too much_ , he thinks as the spell erupts out of him. _Far too much_. The light snaps out of Neville’s mother’s eyes as she’s thrown across the floor like a trussed-up chicken.

Tom stands frozen. There’s a tiny cut on his cheek, oozing blood like tears.

The door slams open. Severus Snape, pale and spittingly angry, storms into the classroom. “ _What is the meaning of this_?”

***

They all turn on him, Tom and the Slytherins and the conjured monsters. It would almost be comedic, if Tom could feel anything but numbness.

Tom wets his lips, trying to ground himself. Harry, by his side, looks up at him, eyes alight. Yes. Yes, Tom can do this.

He breathes deeply around the lump of wood stuck in his chest, tilts his chin up so the wind through the broken windows blows the hair out of his face. The un-horses melt away.

Snape steps in, face white, looking at them like they’re strangers. “What have you _done_?”

They’re all silent, looking to Tom and Harry for leadership.

“Mister Riddle,” Snape says. “Mister Partridge. Please accompany me to my office. The rest of you will _stay here_ while I determine what has occurred.”

Mind churning, Tom leeches the magic out of the dragon bones and, at Snape’s gesture, turns his wand over. Harry hesitates, but does the same.

Snape whirls out of the room, clearly meaning for them to follow.

“Stay here,” Tom tells the others, finding his voice ragged. “This all stays between the twelve of us, understood?”

“My Lord,” Calcifer whispers, kneeling to bare the back of his neck. The others follow, kneeling in respect, watching him with the same hungry eyes he remembers from the train.

He wants to linger, drink in the heady power of the moment, but there’s no time; he takes Harry by the wrist and follows Snape out into the hall.

Hogwarts is silent, save for the clacking of Snape’s heels on stone. Everyone is in exams. It’s surreal, like something out of a dream. Tom doesn’t let go of Harry’s hand.

Snape’s office is in the dungeon, which seems to amuse Harry for some reason. He escorts them in and shuts the door, looming magnificently.

Tom is taller than him.

“Explain,” Snape says, twin spots of livid red appearing high on his cheeks.

“A truly unfortunate accident,” Tom says, feeling himself relax. Just as Harry is at home on the battlefield, this dance of words and exchange of power plays is his element.

“Wand misfire,” Harry says tightly. “She tried to cast something on Tom – I’m not sure what it was, but it seemed to disagree with her wand.”

“Don’t presume to _lie_ to me.”

Tom sits in one of Snape’s chairs, crossing his legs and setting his jaw. “All of our classmates will corroborate our statement, sir. But that doesn’t matter. You’re not going to dig any deeper.” 

“Oh?”

Tom inhales carefully through his nose, settling his mind, and meets Snape’s fathomless eyes. “The timepiece you gave us at the beginning of term held more secrets than you thought it did. It… it saw things.”

Snape blinks once, rapid, like the fluttering of a bat’s wings.

“You haven’t been able to open it in ages, have you? Eleven or twelve years, perhaps, since it’s been functional.”

“I don’t see how this is relevant, Riddle.”

“Family heirloom, was it? Cheerful little trinket, tells you the time and sings you a melody. A nice gift to give a child who’s off to Hogwarts for the first time. And I’m sure all your friends liked to hear it play, didn’t they? Did Lily like to hear its song, Professor?”

Snape has gone very pale.

“You were probably, what – thirteen? fourteen, maybe? – when it first opened its eye. That was probably around the same time you recognized your feelings. And the timepiece could be a confidante of sorts, perhaps. It’s a funny thing, unrequited love. You held it tight to your chest, and it seemed to grow more and more, year by year, until you realized that perhaps some of it might be returned.”

“What are you saying?”

Tom very carefully maintains eye contact, so Snape can sense his resolve as he says, “I know who Dahlia Potter’s father is.”

Harry makes a gasping, wet noise. Tom doesn’t look away from Snape.

Snape settles himself in the chair across from Tom, looking utterly worn. “Ri – _Tom_. You have no evidence.”

“She _looks_ like you. People will talk anyways; the kid’s pale as milk. She looks as much like me as she does her brothers.” Tom folds his hands delicately in his lap. “It would be a shame if it were to get out in an official capacity… Lily’s and Dahlia’s reputations would suffer as much as yours.”

“How dare –”

Tom gets to his feet. “You know what I am,” he says. “ _I do as I will_.”

The last bit comes out in Parseltongue, which he hadn’t planned, but it seems more effective than English would have been. Snape looks old, huddled in his armchair. He nods.

“Remind me what you saw when you came into the Defense room?”

“Alice on the ground. Her students surrounding her, concerned. An accident, but one she probably had coming.”

“Good,” Tom says silkily, stretching out his hand. Snape gives him back his wand. “Would you prefer to walk us back to class, or will you be staying here?”

“I… the two of you are dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Harry hesitates on the threshold, something strange in his eyes. “Professor Snape? Could you call Madam Pomfrey to our class? I think Professor Longbottom needs medical assistance.”

Snape looks up at them. He’s drawn the pocket watch out of the depths of his cloak, to be held loosely between his white fingers. “Of course.”

The dungeons are empty, labyrinthine.

“We should get back to class,” Harry says.

“Yes,” Tom says. “But, Harry –”

Harry doesn’t seem to want to look at him. He turns.

“ _Harry_. Please. Don’t do this again. Just talk to me. You never – _please_.”

He scrubs at his eyes, musses his hair, but looks up at Tom, finally, gray eyes dark in the gloom.

“The things Longbottom said. They were true. I killed Lily and James, didn’t I?”

“ _You_ didn’t, Tom. Besides, I forgave you for that months ago. You’re a lifetime apart from that _thing_ that took their lives.”

“Do you regret what you did to her?”

“She was hurting you,” Harry says, pupils expanding. Tom feels a pull in his navel, a swell in the woody mass in his chest. “What you said about Dahlia –”

“A guess, based on what I could glean from the timepiece’s mind. I was almost certain I wasn’t wrong, though.”

“I thought this world was kind of… idyllic. At first. That it was perfect.”

“There’s no such thing,” Tom says softly. Haltingly, he reaches down and takes Harry’s hand again.

Harry looks down at their joined hands and smiles a little, crookedly, no dimples. “Ready?”

“Let’s go rally the troops.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot to say about this chapter, but I feel like the notes aren't the best forum for that. XD
> 
> That is to say, please comment! I'd love to talk with you about all the reveals in this chapter. Alternatively, [my tumblr has asks open](https://relic--crown.tumblr.com/ask), if that's more your speed.
> 
> Thank you for reading!  
> 🦁


	16. The Second Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom regroup after the events of the Defense exam. Harry angsts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was beta'ed by the wonderful [TreeDaddyD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreeDaddyD/pseuds/TreeDaddyD)!

**Part III: Between Two Rulers**

“The Hufflepuffs are saying she was a hag. Apparently she tried to eat a student in the middle of an exam,” says Susan.

“Louise Selwyn tried to tell me that she was there when it happened. Said Longbottom tried to _Crucio_ someone, but her wand literally blew up in her hand. Said it was blood madness,” Theodore says.

The train compartment, stuffed with their entire dorm save Peryle, lapses into a thoughtful silence. The weight of their secret hangs heavy in the air, binding them together. It’s a strange, new kind of magic, this link between the eleven of them. Tom isn’t sure what to make of it. He’s afraid it’ll shatter, if he pushes it too hard.

“She _was_ mad, wasn’t she?” says Lyra. “I would never have thought it.”

“Not blood madness kind of mad, just…” Calcifer sighs.

Lyra stares at Tom, then looks away.

Justin digs out a pack of cards and starts teaching the others a Muggle variant of poker. Though Tom is excellent at poker, he abstains. There’s something peaceful about just leaning back against the window, listening to the game and trying not to jostle Harry, half-asleep against his shoulder.

Before they know it, the train pulls up to the platform. 

The Slytherins’ eyes fall on him and Harry. Tom stands with purpose, looking around at their expectant faces.

“It’s like Peryle’s been saying,” he tells them. “Our people stand at a precipice. We all heard Longbottom: there are strange tides coming, things beyond our scope. Beyond Hogwarts. Keep an ear out, when you’re at home. I’ll owl. We will weather this storm together.”

He expects questions, but they just nod. He sees determination in Pansy and Daphne, fear in Michael and Eliza. Calcifer beams grotesquely up at him, eager devotion thick in his mind.

“What did I do to inspire all of that?” he asks Harry after the train disgorges them, leaving them to scan the crowd for Potters.

“You _reanimated a dragon skeleton._ Slytherins know power when they see it; they’d be fools not to start following you around like puppies.”

“I don’t like puppies,” Tom says.

“That’s because you’re a villain. You’re not allowed to like puppies. Oh, I think I see James… c’mon, Tom, they’re waiting for us.”

Lily and James look drained, anxious. James pulls Geoff close to him, protective, hand cupped around the back of his neck. Lily holds herself well, but her cuticles are a ragged red.

She stands on her tiptoes to kiss Henry on the forehead. “How were finals, dear?”

“I think they went well,” Henry says carefully, seeming to pick up on his parents’ distress. “It was jarring, what happened with Professor Longbottom, but everyone’s been in decent spirits…”

“We ought to continue this conversation at home,” James says, glancing around at the other parents.

Lily holds out a raw-nailed hand and whisks them back to the Potter’s countryside estate.

“What’s wrong?” Geoff asks in a small voice, stumbling out of the Apparition. “Has something happened?”

Dahlia’s been waiting for them, face still, looking tiny in front of the big vine-covered house. She’s staring blankly at Harry. Tom wishes, for the thousandth time, that he could see into her mind.

“Nothing’s wrong, love,” says Lily. “Come, now, we’ll talk inside.”

The kitchen is empty save for Maggie the kneazle, perched on the counter.

“You know you’re not meant to be up there,” James tells her, scooping her up and holding her tightly despite her mewl of protest.

“Has someone died?” Henry says. “You two are acting…”

James exchanges a meaningful look with Lily. Maggie seizes on the opportunity to wriggle free of his grasp, landing on the wood of the kitchen floor with precision and stalking away. “No one’s died. Let’s all sit down, yeah?”

They sit. The roof of Tom’s mouth is sticky with unease. He wants to touch Harry, to just take his hand under the table, but he restrains himself.

“This is to be kept inside the family, understand?” James says sternly.

Tom feels a moment’s flickering warmth at his inclusion in the statement, but that emotion is crushed in the next moment.

“Alice’s condition is more grim than we first expected,” Lily says. “She… she’s expected to have to become a permanent resident at St. Mungo’s. Live the rest of her life in the Janus Thickey Ward.”

Harry’s only reaction is an infinitesimal twitch of his false Parkinson nose.

“That’s where they keep victims of irreparable spell damage,” Henry says. “What _happened_ to her? I heard a dozen different stories on the train ride alone.”

“Memory Charm. Freakishly strong one, at that. She’s lost her ability to create new memories along with all her old memories.” Lily wrings her hands. “Apparently it was a misfire – wands do that, sometimes. Turn against their holder. It’s most common in dragon heartstring cores, and that’s what she had… but Dumbledore suspects foul play. Severus was the one to find her, but he’s being so tight-lipped about the whole thing.”

“They’re saying she tried to take a student’s memory? I can’t see Professor Longbottom doing something like that,” Henry says.

“It’s a nasty business,” James says darkly. “We agree, and so does the Minister. Alice would never cast an irreversible Dark spell on a student.”

Geoff frowns. “I don’t understand – what _did_ happen, then?”

“We’re not sure. All we know is that… well, something at Hogwarts isn’t what it seems.”

They nod solemnly. Tom feels a vague fuzz of guilt for misleading Lily and James, but he’s well accustomed to lying through his teeth to adults.

“In light of that, the Minister and Headmistress McGonagall have asked for me to step up to the Defense post next year – and I’ve agreed! I’m going to be a professor. What do you all think of that?”

Dahlia beams. “We’ll go to Hogwarts together!”

Geoff makes a face of exaggerated horror. “Dad, you’ll be a terrible professor! You have no respect for rules!”

James laughs, accepting hugs from all his three children. Tom feels the guilt solidify into a hard lump of dread inside of him. He and Harry will have to tread carefully in the coming year, with James on the teaching staff.

***

Tom casts an anti-eavesdropping charm on the door and collapses on his bed.

“Fuck,” Harry says. “Bloody fucking bags of burning manticore scat.”

“I should take a photo for the album,” Tom says. “‘Harry realizes for the first time that _actions have consequences_.’ I don’t think we have to worry about too much just yet; we’ve Snape on a pretty tight leash, and I would be very surprised to see any of the Slytherins betray us at this juncture. James might prove a bit of an obstacle, but he trusts us well enough that he shouldn’t suspect anything.”

“That – _Tom_. That’s not what I’m upset about.”

“Oh.”

“I basically killed a woman – God, poor Neville –”

“You said you didn’t regret it.”

“I – I hoped the damage wouldn’t be so horrible –”

“You _cast the spell_. You knew exactly how bad it was.”

Harry stills his pacing. “You’re right. I just, I… Tom, I _don’t_ regret it. I really, honestly still don’t, and that might be the worst part. She was – is – she’s a good person. I don’t _recognize myself_. I could never have done something like that a year ago. This place is killing me, Tom, it’s stripping me away, you’re – I – _fuck_.”

“Harry –”

“And my little sister’s… because apparently my mother couldn’t keep her hands off that dripping, slimy git, and the oaks are dead, and _you_. You absolute – do you know how ironic it is that I’m saying all this to you? You’re my best friend, Tom, and it doesn’t even feel weird anymore. It feels like I’ve known you forever – you and your _stupid_ diary –” he chokes, and Tom is concerned for a moment before he remembers the brand on the back of his neck.

“ _Harry_. It’ll be okay, I promise.” It’s the sort of thing the nuns used to say, and Tom knows as soon as it leaves his mouth that it’s wrong.

“You don’t know _shit_ , Tom Riddle. No one in this ridiculous, backwards place knows anything. You – you don’t even know my real face. Hell.”

Tom swallows mucus.

“Not that I’ve ever known anything, not really. But at least in that other place, I had a purpose. I knew who I was, and what I had to do. I had dragons to slay and spells to learn and friends who weren’t –” Tom hasn’t heard him trip so much over the unspeak-seal in months. “I haven’t been able to cast my Patronus lately, did you know? Prongs has left me. My parents would, too, if they could see what I did. What I’m becoming.”

There are tears in his eyes, brightening the false gray. Tom wonders if his mouth might taste salty. Horrified, he walls off the thought. This isn’t the time.

“ _Tom_.”

“Harry – I… forgive you, for what happened to Longbottom. Even if you don’t. And I _like_ who you are, or who you’re becoming, or… whatever you’re going on about. You make me want to be brave. I’ve never wanted to be brave before.”

Harry frowns. One of his eyes lets loose the tear pooling at its base, leaving one cheek wet and the other dry. “You’re an idiot, Tom,” he says softly. “You’re a genius, mostly, don’t get me wrong, but I never imagined…”

Tom thinks he ought to be offended at this, but he too is mostly trying not to cry. Something about seeing Harry in tears pulls away at something deep inside him, awakens the kind of empathy that he’d thought Wool’s had bled out of him. “We need to make plans,” is all he says. “Our enemies are more numerous than we had suspected.”

“She was working for Dumbledore, wasn’t she?”

Tom turns to the bedroom wall and lifts the landscape painting off, leaving the surface bare. _Dumbledore,_ he writes on the top in flaming letters, then an arrow pointing to _Alice Longbottom_ and an arrow down to _heartwood harvests_.

Harry sits down on his own bed, wiping his eyes. “Put another arrow from Dumbledore to James and Lily,” he says, gravelly-voiced.

Tom does.

“And another one to the Department of Mysteries.”

Tom connects this node by a dashed line to _Alice Longbottom_. “They seemed to have fed her most of the information they got off you.”

Harry chews on his lip. “So, basically the entire Ministry is behind what happened to the oaks.”

“ _Oh_.” Tom writes _Auror Department_ and connects it to _heartwood harvests_. “Those blue-hoods. I’ll bet some of them were Aurors.”

“The explosion we read about in the _Prophet_ ,” Harry realizes. “A coverup for Ministry workers who we – who died in the attack on the grove?”

Tom draws a dashed line from Dumbledore to _Daily Prophet_ , sitting back grimly to stare with Harry at the web. “We’re still missing a motive.”

“What, other than having an army of trees?”

“If they want an army, they must be looking to start a war…”

Harry’s eyes flicker over the diagram. “But against _who_?”

“Precisely.” Tom hesitates. “Harry, do you remember this fall, when I was researching Mantle theory?”

“All that nonsense about Dark Lords and semi-sentient magical forces swooping about Europe?”

“Uh – yes. It is my belief that Dumbledore is bearing the two Mantles simultaneously.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Functionally? I’m not quite sure. It’s only been done once, by Merlin. It would mean he has access to more magical power than anyone in the last millennium.”

“ _Hell_.”

Tom leans back, considering the forces arrayed against them. “And if what Longbottom said was true, significant factions among these groups want me dead.”

“Maybe we would be better off cooperating with them,” Harry says, lingering on the _Lily and James_ node.

“They _killed our oaks_.”

Harry’s eyes catch on Tom’s chest, where the bark creeps over his heart. “Okay, then,” he says. “Vengeance it is.”

***

Tom lies in a field of wheat, staring up at a death-green sky. Great black birds circle overhead. His heart hurts desperately, stretching up out of his chest and towards the white burn of the distant sun.

The soil reaches up, fingers formed of grainy dirt stretching, burrowing into his ears and mouth.

“ _This is redemption_ ,” whispers a woman’s voice. “ _We haven’t room for monsters within the walls of Hogwarts. Close your eyes, little one._ ”

His heart grows a thick canopy of leaves, shielding him from the light high above. A sheep, tall as a man's head at its shoulder, begins to graze on the fragile new growth as Tom drowns in the earth –

There’s something on his shoulder. A spider, he thinks, and rolls over to try and shake it away –

The soil loses its grip on him. The light of the sun tears away like cobwebs in a fast-flowing river, and Tom finds himself in the real world, Harry’s hand flying off his shoulder as Tom pins him down, wand at his throat.

Harry looks up at him, gray eyes bright in the half-light. “You weren’t breathing,” he says. “I thought I should wake you… do you always sleep with your wand under your pillow?”

Tom relaxes, sitting back. “Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I – thank you, I suppose. My sleep has been poor lately.”

“I haven’t been able to get to sleep at all,” Harry says. “D’you want to go on a walk?”

Tom blinks down at him. “What time is it?”

“’S like three.”

“Oh.”

“Are you going to get off me?”

“... yes.”

Out on the Potter’s lawn, the stars seem close enough to touch. 

They linger at the edge of the woods. Tom licks his lips, suddenly feeling there is too much saliva in his mouth. He’s gripped with a terrible dread that seems ill-suited for the beauty of the summer night.

“You think they’ll be dead, too.”

Crickets chirp in the field. A breeze carries over the rose garden, ruffling Tom’s hair. “Yes.”

Harry reaches out to take his hand, and they cross the threshold into the birch wood.

There’s a density to the darkness that sends shivers down Tom’s spine, that makes him feel bigger than himself. Harry doesn’t cast a _Lumos_ ; even through the canopy, the stars are just bright enough to see by.

“ _Is anyone there_?” Tom hisses. Scales flash silver in the night, and he kneels to scoop up a little garter snake, the same one he had met a summer ago.

“ _Hello, no-scales bad-snake not-snake_ ,” it says happily, slithering up his arm so it can coil loosely around his neck. “ _You are called Master by the not-me-snakes. I spoke of heat in-place-of-scales and the not-me-snakes were impressed_.”

“ _You’re a funny little thing, aren’t you_?” Harry hisses, standing close to Tom and reaching up on his tiptoes to get a look at the snake.

Tom is grateful for the shadows concealing the heat in his face. “ _Parseltongue spoken by the garters tends to come out like that. The dialect humans speak lines up a lot more closely with the python dialect. There are books in the Restricted Section on the matter, if you’re curious_.”

The little snake’s tongue flicks out to taste Tom’s neck. Harry smiles at it, cheeks rounding to catch starlight.

“We should keep moving,” Tom says, falling out of Parseltongue and taking half a step away.

Things watch them from the dark. Tom senses them, just on the edge of sight, but knows they won’t bother him and Harry.

Deep, deep in the wood, the scent of sage and iron comes to him, faint but still there.

“Tom –”

“They’re _alive_.”

They pause for just a moment to let the little snake slither off. Then they race, careless and scrambling, across the wildflower-strewn riverbank and over the little brook, up the hill to the oak’s grove.

Starlight slips into the clearing where the oaks had once been, painting the old, cracked standing stone white. The hilltop is nearly bare, but for a single hunched oak.

It sings, just softly, as they approach. The melody is fragile, like it might blow away in a strong breeze.

“Why would they leave just one?’

“I don’t know,” Tom says, moving towards the surviving white oak. “Guilt, maybe. The Hogwarts oaks were stronger by leaps and bounds. They really didn’t need to harvest all they could… this one might be more valuable to them as a piece of, I don’t know, cultural heritage than as a heartwood soldier.”

Harry reaches out to touch the tree’s trunk, shutting his eyes.

“It will probably die anyway, within a year or two,” Tom murmurs. “They’re social beings. They need their colonies. It would have been better for them to have killed this one, too.”

“How _horrible_.”

Tom sits on the mossy roots of the oak and rests his hands on his knees. “Like I said before: we’ll have our revenge.”

“Even so, that won’t solve anything.”

“It’ll mean everyone knows not to cross us – that we can protect the woods in the oaks’ place.”

Harry sinks down behind him. He’s taken off the glamour amulet, looping its cord around his fingers in a hypnotic rhythm. His face is much more angular without it, like a sharpened Henry. His lips part in the starlight, and Tom feels it in his fingertips, in the pulpy membrane of his pulsing heart.

“Your eyes really do glow in the dark,” is all he can think to say. Those lips smile.

“Someday, I’ll be able to tell you the story of how I got the scar on my forehead. I think that was what made my eyes go funny.”

The oak mumbles incoherently to itself.

“So that’s our goal, then? Topple every existing structure in Wizarding Britain in a bloody revenge quest, then establish ourselves as the… defenders of the forest?”

Tom smiles. “Harry, we’re _Slytherins_. Nothing wrong with a spot of ambition.”

“You think they’re going to try and kill you regardless.”

“Longbottom basically said as much.”

“We could just… run away to Albania or something,” Harry offers, tilting his head. His hair frames this face better than the false one, drawing attention to the line of his jaw and the length of his throat. The green eyes are unsettling as hell. Tom is enraptured.

“I thought you were meant to be the brave one. You want to run away?”

“No. I don’t. But I do think it would be the most… sensible course of action.” He turns the disguise pendant over in his hand, frowning.

“I agree,” Tom says slowly. “If only to regroup, gather power, wait for Dumbledore to finally keel over.”

Harry’s eyes widen. “The Dark Mantle would pass to you.”

“In all likelihood, yes. But, Harry, I don’t think I _can_ leave Britain. My heart is only still beating because of the land’s magic.”

“You think you’re like the centaurs, now? Tied to the Forest?”

Tom puts his hand over his chest, feeling the plant matter there spasm. “From what I know of wild magic, yes. Forgive me for not being interested in testing that little theory.”

“So… we return to Hogwarts. Recruit militias, learn what we can.”

“Keeping a low profile until Dumbledore realizes we’re a threat,” Tom says decisively.

“We’re fucked.”

“Quite.”

They fall asleep on the bank of the stream, star-shaped wildflowers scattered around them. Something like hope tangles, impossibly, in Tom’s chest.

*** 

July passes in a haze. Tom is growing into himself, becoming elegant rather than lanky, distinguished rather than bony. Harry notices this, _keeps_ noticing it, in confusing ways. He entertains the possibility of talking to Hermione about the whole thing, but she only ever seems to come over when Ron is around, and the two of them always seem too caught up in each other to bother with him. That’s what he tells himself, anyway.

He’s not quite sure how to deal with Dahlia, anymore, this tiny, sweet girl with Snape’s dark eyes. The nature of her conception isn’t her fault – how could it be? – but it haunts him, whenever he looks at her. Lily is not the person he thought he knew, the brave, bright woman from that battered old photo album.

In the first week of summer, Tom tries to fly once again. They go out in the early hours of the morning, and Harry shows him how best to hold the broomstick, touching the backs of his hands so their scars align. It takes a toll on Tom’s heart, between the terror of the altitude and sheer physical exertion; they don’t try it again.

The Potters, all of them, suspect nothing. That’s perhaps the worst part of all this. Harry feels like a fraud every time Geoff hugs him, every time James ruffles his hair. He, who murdered those blue-cloaked Ministry workers, who brutally strangled the manticore with its own mane, who poured so much magic into Alice Longbottom’s mind that it simply gave out. He deserves none of this love.

He says something to this effect to Tom, but he just frowns sternly down at him, dark-eyed and serious, and says, “they _are_ going to find out, one way or another. We’re better off taking what we can get before all of this blows up in our faces.” Still, Harry catches him casting Geoff little looks of disquiet, like he’s bracing himself for the inevitable.

_Snake in the grass_ , Harry accuses himself as he teases Dahlia about what House she’ll end up in, walks with Lily in the rose garden, laughs himself breathless over Henry’s impression of Headmistress McGonagall, loses lightsaber fights against Geoff. There’s something sick and cold inside him, a twisting self-loathing that he hasn’t felt this strongly since before he met Hagrid, when his identity was a cascade of whispered _freak_ s built on a Daddy Long-legs’ brittle back.

Then Tom will toss him a carelessly joyous smile, or say something offhand and complimentary, and Harry will think that he’ll be alright, that he can build himself up again on the back of something new.

It’s a bit scary. That Tom Riddle has become this important to him over the course of the year. But Harry still believes in bonds formed of spilled blood. Tom had almost died at Harry’s side, under the wing of the dead manticore, while the sky poured down enough rain to wash away the agonies of the day. Tom is a murderer, and vain, and sharp enough to cut himself. But Harry _likes_ those things about him.

He doesn’t tell Lily and James when his birthday is. They don’t ask, and he almost prefers it that way. Birthdays have always been solitary affairs for him: spider tea parties, candles traced into the dust, savoring the crumbs of Mrs. Weasley’s cakes over dreams of autumn. Besides, the idea of other people trying to celebrate him makes him deeply uncomfortable.

July 31st dawns unseasonably cold, sky stifled with dark, slow-moving clouds.

“Happy birthday,” Tom says through a yawn, pushing dark hair out of his face.

“Have you got me a present?”

“I’ll help you with baking Henry’s pumpkin bread.”

Harry throws a pillow at him.

That’s what they end up doing, anyways. Baking pumpkin bread. Harry experiments with orange zest and nutmeg with exciting results. The dough, at least, tastes exceptional.

Lily comes downstairs as it’s rising. She laughs at the two of them, sitting together on the wooden floor, contemplating the bake. “Is this what they did for fun in the forties? Watch bread rise?”

“’S a sleepy day today,” Harry says. “’N the floor is very comfy. Moving is silly, not when we’ve got to come back and bake the thing in just a couple of minutes.”

“Of course,” Lily says teasingly. “I shouldn’t have questioned you.”

The doorbell rings, sending dread shooting through Harry.

Lily goes off to get the door, and the sounds of she and Snape greeting each other reach them from the other side of the house.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Harry mutters. They’ve managed to spend the whole summer avoiding Snape – aided by Snape avoiding them in turn. This confrontation is inevitable, but he has no interest in dealing with it.

“Don’t be ridiculous. He can’t do anything against us.”

“Easy for you to say – you can just pull your threateningly polite routine. _I_ don’t have access to tricks like that.”

“Just act how you normally do around him, like he’s offended you somehow and you’re trying to figure out the best way to get back at him.”

“I don’t – well. We’ve been on better terms lately, he’ll notice.”

“Harry. The last time we interacted with him, we threatened him into keeping quiet about our destroying his colleague’s mind. I think it would be a lot more unusual of you to pretend as though you’re still friends.”

Snape and Lily round the corner. Harry leaves Tom to make small talk as he busies himself with very slowly putting the bread away in the oven.

“Harry,” Lily says, “come tell Severus about that work you and Tom did on that clever lightsaber spell Geoffrey is so fond of, will you?”

Snape glares at him over his hawkish nose as Harry explains the spell. It’s the same look he used to give Harry in the other world, a sort of restrained hatred. There’s an undercurrent of horrified fascination there that was never present before, but overall Harry finds himself more comfortable with this Snape than the one who had given him nice comments on his essays and told him old school stories over cups of tea.

Henry and Geoff eventually rattle downstairs, Dahlia trailing along behind them. Rooke starts putting together Henry’s birthday brunch. They’re preparing for a smaller gathering than last year: just the uncles, Hermione, and Malfoy.

The guests all arrive in the early afternoon, gifts in hand, and Henry drags everyone into a mass Quidditch match, adults against children.

“I can’t fly,” Tom says regretfully.

Henry frowns. “Oh, c’mon, Tom, even for my birthday? No one’s going to judge you for not being as prodigious as Harry.”

“He has a heart condition,” Harry says firmly.

“A condition called being lame,” says Geoff. It’s meant to be a joke, but Tom purses his lips in a way that makes it clear he’s unimpressed.

“We’ll both stay grounded,” Harry offers. “It’s more fair like that, anyway: that way you’ll have six-on-six. I think six-on-eight, with half of the eight playing for their school teams, is a bit unbalanced.”

“We don’t want it to be balanced,” Geoff protests, “we want to beat their wrinkly asses.”

“Leave it,” Henry tells him after a glance at Harry’s expression. “This way Sirius can’t claim we’re cheating when we win… c’mon, let’s go assign positions.”

Harry and Tom lay down by the wall by the rose garden, watching the others fly in great arcing loops against the gray sky. Hermione, Snape, and Pettigrew are notably wobbly fliers, but James is fantastic. And Henry, of course, looks like a bird on the wind, graceful and utterly controlled. He and Malfoy are brilliant together.

“I wonder if Henry’s considered playing Chaser,” Harry comments. “He’s suited for it.”

Tom grunts. Harry looks over to see his eyes closed, one hand against his forehead.

“Are you napping?”

A slice of dark iris flickers open. Tom’s narrow mouth ticks up at the corners.

Harry finds himself distracted from the sky, looking at Tom’s long limbs, the mole at the hinge of his jaw, the delicate bones of his knuckles.

He falls asleep at some point, and wakes with grass stamped into his cheek and a warm drowsiness in his core. James rouses him gently to a picnic dinner out on the grass.

“No watermelon,” Tom says under his breath. “Bloody atrocity, that. A picnic without watermelon. Imagine.”

“Announcements!” Henry says halfway through the meal, clambering to his feet. “First off, we’ve a surprise – I know I’m the one meant to receive gifts today, but we thought it was more dramatic to tell you all now. We only managed it a week ago.”

He pauses, glancing around at them. Harry is still too sleepy to muster up any real enthusiasm, but James and Geoff seem excited just by the mention of a ‘surprise’.

Suddenly, Henry vanishes. Harry finds himself very awake – he hadn’t seen the flash of the Cloak, so some other magic must be at play. Is this the surprise?

But no: Henry isn’t gone. A bird stands on the picnic blanket where he had been, the feathers on its breast puffy with pride.

Sirius screams, incoherent and joyous. James scoops up the bird and does a restrained little dance with it on its arm.

“A marsh hawk,” Tom says enviously. “That’s an exceptionally useful Animagus transformation.”

Then Malfoy and Hermione shift, too, into a white-gold fisher cat and a lynx, and all hell breaks loose.

Soon enough, the Animagi are all darting off into the woods for 'a frolick', as James puts it, leaving Harry, Tom, Geoff, and Dahlia alone in the house.

“I had no _idea_ they were working on something like that,” Geoff sighs, chewing morosely on the leftovers of Henry’s birthday cake. “I mean, I figured they were up to something not completely legal, but this… gah. I should have known, too, Henry always loved hearing from Mum and Dad about the time they spent working on their own transformations. They did it when they were your age, too.”

Tom gets a funny glint in his eye.

“No plotting,” Harry says reflexively, then pauses. “Tom. Seriously. I know what you’re thinking. No.”

“’M not plotting,” Tom takes a sip of his tea, obviously trying to hide a smirk. “No idea what you’re talking about, Harry.”

Dahlia is drawing horses again, in long swooping lines that betray an artistic maturity surprising for her age. They spill, dark and inky, off the paper and onto the table, shaking out their manes and galloping away.

***

The first warning sign is a story in the Prophet. It’s August, and humid, the days seeming to stretch into each other, endless as the summer sky.

“HAPLESS MUGGLES STUMBLE INTO DIAGON ALLEY,” says the headline. It’s written as a comedy piece, accompanied by the image of a well-dressed man and woman looking confused as an Auror escorts them gently away from the wizarding sector of London.

“Funny,” says Lily. “Wonder how they got in.”

“It says here they were looking for a pet shop.” Geoff giggles. “Look here, there’s a direct quote: ‘We thought the flat might be spruced up by a goldfish.’”

And for a while, that’s all they think of it.

Harry and Tom spend an awful lot of time in their room. The wall that had once held the landscape painting is now a mad kaleidoscope of hypothesized connections and crackpot plans of attack.

“None of this means anything,” Harry finally says one day, watching with a frown as Tom scribbles out conjecture about foreign relations. “We don’t have enough of an idea about what’s going on to even make these kinds of guesses.”

“What else are we meant to do?” Tom scowls, clawing a hand through his hair. “We’re trapped. They’re likely going to try and kill me before we graduate, if we take Longbottom’s testimony at face value. Whatever they’re doing with the oaks is going to make them completely unstoppable. There has to be a clue – something we’re missing –”

“Well, we’re not going to figure anything out if we keep on like this. We’re just digging ourselves a hole of suppositions.”

Tom stands very still for a moment, motionless save for his heaving chest. Then, in a sudden, violent motion, he whips his wand around, pulling all the letters from the wall and sending them into the floor, where they form a dark stain on the wood. “You’re right,” he snaps. “I hope you’ve a viable alternative for what we should do with our time, though, because I’ll go mad if I don’t have _something_ to obsess over.”

Harry bites his lip. “We could make another new spell, I suppose. Could be useful in combat – keeps the opposition guessing.”

Tom’s eyes are bright and manic. “Or we could work on an Animagus transformation.”

“Just because the stupid ‘Triangle of Death’ can do something you can’t –”

“It’s nothing to do with them, Harry. This is a matter of utility – if there’s a chance you’re a bird of prey, like Henry is, can you imagine how useful that would be?”

“You’re thinking about what we’ll do if we have to go on the run.”

“If you’re a hawk, and I’m a snake of some kind, we could travel by air relatively unimpeded.”

“Isn’t the ritual really dangerous?”

“For Light wizards, maybe.”

Harry swallows. Become an Animagus, like his parents. It’s something he used to daydream about, an idle fantasy of days before the time slippage. It seems almost childish now. A legacy he’s no longer worthy of.

“I’ll do it even without you,” Tom says, frowning. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while now; it’s too useful an ability to pass up, and I’m quite accomplished at transfigurations.”

Harry finds himself reluctantly compelled. He imagines being like Henry, taking to the sky without the aid of a broom, spreading his arms and feeling the wind under them, speeding with thestrals over the top of the Forest. Henry has stopped wearing his glasses, saying his human vision is improved by the transformation. The hawk still bears the mark of them, though, dark bands below sharp green eyes.

Harry sighs, almost feigning reluctance now. “Yeah, okay. I’ll do it.”

“Good,” Tom says, pulling a book out from who-knows-where.

“Where did you –”

“Stole it from Lily’s office.”

“Do we even need the book? I’m sure Malfoy would love to give you _private lessons_.”

Tom gives him a quelling look.

“How long have you been planning this, anyway?”

He shrugs. “It was on the backburner. I have… a lot of things on the backburner.”

Harry scratches his head, amused despite himself. “So, what does one have to do to become an Animagus?”

“First off, we need to brew a potion,” Tom thumps the book open and runs his finger down what looks like a list of ingredients. “Oh, yes. This is going to be _fun_.”

Harry sighs. “I hate potions.”

“And that’s why _I’m_ going to be handling that part of the process. You can do the dirty work: look at this: mandrake leaves, blue sage… we’re going to have to sneak into the greenhouses at night to get our hands on a lot of this stuff.”

“Or we could just, like, buy some,” Harry points out. “Y’know, owl order? We wouldn’t even have to wait to get back to Hogwarts to start.”

Tom blinks. “Oh – good idea. It’s funny, I keep forgetting I have money now.”

The last two weeks of summer are a blur. It’s nice to have something immediate to focus on. Tom works out letters to allies in and out of Slytherin, leaving his fingers ink-stained and his brow furrowed. Harry spends a lot of time in the woods, hunting for some of the more obscure ingredients: dew untouched by human feet, wolf-chewed mouse bones, a snake’s first molt.

The little garters help him readily, asking in exchange only a ride around his neck. He relishes the time spent outdoors, away from the faith of his parents and Dahlia’s dark eyes and Tom’s barely-restrained existential terror.

The snakes don’t mind his long silences. With them, the sensation that he’s adrift, unmoored from all that he had known of himself, is okay. The snakes aren’t like Henry, always asking ‘ _are you all right',_ or Hermione, trying so obviously to give him space that it just makes the pain worse.

He likes to think that the lonely oak’s song is growing stronger. He brings it blood, just once. A baby deer in the woods, not fast enough to avoid the cutting curse he sends into its neck. Harry doesn’t think before he casts the spell. He just wants, like Dennis Bishop in the cave from Tom’s youth, to see what it looks like for something to die.

Tom sees the blood under his nails and doesn’t comment, just looks up at his face and bites his lip, like he feels like he _should_ say something. Harry’s chest hurts. He wants to touch the wood growing over Tom’s heart, wants…

Harry reads about the Animagus transformation, or has Tom read about it to him. Symbolically, part of it is about killing the human part of oneself, and awakening the animal. He sleeps, some nights, in the oak grove, alone under the moon. Those nights, with the oak’s song thumping through his veins and the dark of the night sky looming overhead, Harry thinks that he won’t be a hawk at all, but a spider, one of the little brown ones he had played with as a child.

The Unspeakables don’t call for Harry that summer. It’s a bad sign, probably, or at least that’s what Tom seems to think. Harry’s just glad not to have to go back to the Department of Mysteries.

Three nights before they return to Hogwarts, the full moon hangs high and swollen in the clear sky. Harry and Tom watch from their bedroom window as the Marauders stream into the woods, ranks swollen with three new members, darting and joyful in the moonlight. Harry feels hot anticipation in his scalp and the pads of his fingers.

Tom passes him a mandrake leaf, fingers a brilliant white in the moonlight. “Cheers,” he says, dark hair curling into his eyes.

“To transformation.” Harry sighs, turning the leaf over to see its haired underside. He places it carefully into his mouth, between his teeth and cheek.

“I’ll do the sticking charm,” Tom says, leaning forward and putting one hand on Harry’s neck, thumb holding his jaw in place. Harry goes very still and tries not to breathe too loudly. “ _Epoximise_. There. Here, you do me; we’ll need to reapply every two days or so.”

Harry adheres Tom’s leaf into his mouth. His own leaf has an alien taste to it that reminds him of the scent of the oaks, with their aftertaste of blood.

“A month of these in our mouths,” Tom says. “Then the potion should be mature.”

Harry closes his eyes. “And then,” he finishes, “all that remains is to wait for an electrical storm.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 3, baby! This next section of the story is my favorite so far, especially once we get to chapter 18 and beyond. I'm very excited.
> 
> I'm ripping the Animagus transformation stuff off of a Pottermore article, twisted to better fit my personal aesthetic sensibilities -- which is to say that I made it a bit more metal. Fight me. (One of the steps is to suck on a mandrake leaf for a full month, btw. That's what they were doing at the end.)
> 
> Edit 11.18.2020: added in a few panels from the gorgeous comic by [casparelli](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/)! Do yourself a favor and check out the rest of the piece here: [(Part 1)](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/post/633894778221854720/part-1-part-2-part-3-part4-is-coming-soon) [(Part 2)](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/post/633975114593091584/part-two-of-the-minicomic-inspired-by-the) [(Part 3)](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/post/634079747072278528/part-3-of-the-minicomic-inspired-by-the-incredible) (Part 4) [(Part 5)](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/post/641781634725740544/part-1-part-2-part-3-part-4-end-part5)
> 
> 🦚


	17. Stained-Glass Roses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom return to Hogwarts for their sixth year. But between the silence of the woods, the suspicion of their classmates, and James's post as Defense teacher, this new school year promises more danger than ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the marvelous [TreeDaddyD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreeDaddyD/pseuds/TreeDaddyD) for beta'ing!

Hogwarts looms on the horizon, windows blazing with light against the dark slab of the sky. Tom licks his lips, mouth thick with the rusty taste of mandrake leaf. The thestrals, pulling their carriage, seem nervous. Perhaps they find the continued silence of the Forest as unnerving as he does.

He’s watched on one side by the baleful eye of the waning moon, and sharp-eyed Calcifer on the other. The two of them are surrounded by chattering Ravenclaws, all allies. Aiming to fortify his ties to the other Houses, Tom had declined riding with the other Slytherins.

Tom props himself up against the open window, seeing himself reflected in Dean’s mind. The angles of his own face look pale in the moonlight, etched beautifully in Dean’s stained-glass thoughts. Through Dean’s eyes, he watches his lips form a polite smile as he listens to Fey Crouch recount her summer travels.

It’s difficult to bring even this false smile to his face. He feels as though he’s stretching a mask over some great gaping void, a hollowness mirrored by the dark of the night and the shadows lurking between the trees. This place isn’t home, not anymore. Not without the oaks. His bones ache in time to his heartbeat, a claustrophobic death knell. 

He wishes he had ridden with Harry and the others. 

Calcifer turns to him again, as he has a hundred times that night, some unspoken question heavy in his hooded eyes. Tom looks away, feeling the impending weight of the Mantle like a physical thing bearing down on his shoulders.

It’s hard to remember his resolve, hard to think about rebuilding, in the midst of the oaks’ crushing silence. He wishes that Harry had truly killed Longbottom, that he had cast a blasting curse straight into her chest, right where that heart-stopper had hit Tom. Wishes he could have seen it erupt between her ribs and send scraps of her flying through the classroom, spattering on the broken glass and landing wetly on Tom’s own face – 

“Tom?” says Jonathan Tonks. “I’d be interested to hear your take on the matter: when you’re dealing with a dragon blood potion base, what temperature is best? I’ve always had the most success at a few degrees colder than the textbooks suggest.”

“That’s patently ridiculous,” Fey says, fiddling irritably with her glasses. “If nothing else, there’s something wrong with your thermometer. Riddle will agree with me.”

He blinks himself back to the real world, wiping his hands covertly on his robes. They’re eyeing him a bit warily; he must have let his expression slip. He smiles reassuringly and throws himself into a passable performance of an excited student, and soon enough they’re eating out of his hand again – all save honey-gold Luna Lovegood, whom no one had invited anyway.

The remainder of the carriage ride passes more rapidly, and Tom finds himself reluctantly thankful for a distraction from the bubbling danger of his thoughts.

As he moves to leave the carriage, Luna stops him with a bony hand clamped onto his wrist. Calcifer tries to hang back, too, but Tom waves him off, thinking. A year ago, Luna had hummed the song of the Potters’ oak grove. She’s Dahlia’s friend, he remembers. Henry had told him that she had the ability to intuitively sense the Dark or Light alignment of others’ magic.

She won’t look at him. Through the cotton-down of her eyelashes, he can only just glimpse of her eyes, the milky blue of the moon through a tinted lens. They’re focused somewhere near the ruin of his heart. 

“What do you want?” he says, a little snappishly, imagining Harry and the others leaving him behind in the mass migration to the feast. He wouldn’t normally mind; it’s not like they’d ever forget to save _him_ a seat, but he hardly knows Luna. She’s leagues beneath his notice, magic-seer or not.

“Wrackspurts can be contagious, you know,” she tells his chest. “I don’t think it’s entirely your fault that you have so many.”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Harsher than a snap, now. “Are you _trying_ to waste my time?”

“It’s just – you live with Harry Partridge, right? He’s got the worst infestation I’ve ever seen. He didn’t have quite so many before this summer…”

He tries to wrench his arm away, but she’s surprisingly strong. “Either speak plainly or leave me alone.”

Luna tilts her face up at him, finally meeting his eyes. Tom looks into her mind.

He sees something dark, buzzing, dense with spines. Then Harry, leaning against the Potter’s garden wall, a mess of stormy green clouds sparking around him. Tom’s own face as seen from below, lined in cruelty, a fractal of lacy black spiderwebbing out behind him. The song of the Hogwarts oaks hangs over it all, picked out in a flute line and not quite in rhythm.

“It’s okay to be sad,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut to cast him out of her mind. “I am, too, and I never even met them in person… white oaks can be dangerous, you know. They can eat people, if not properly fed.”

“They tried to eat Harry once,” Tom says, gently prying her fingers off his wrist.

Her eyes are back on his chest. “Can I see it?”

“What?”

“Your heart. I can hear it.”

“I’m not taking my shirt off for a stranger.”

She smiles secretively at the space over his shoulder, then darts a glance into his eyes so quickly that all he can read is the thought, _Legilimency is more invasive than stripping, Tom_.

“Don’t be silly,” he says. “Let’s get on back to the castle, now, or we’ll miss the Sorting.”

“Yes, my Lord,” she says, soft and mocking. She takes his right hand – not to hold it, but to inspect the ridges of his time travel scars in the moonlight.

He lets her. He should probably have hexed her into oblivion a while ago, but she’s started humming something resembling the melody of the Hogwarts oaks. It could be useful, he thinks, to have a magic-seer on his side. 

“What kept you?” Pansy asks as he finally arrives at the Slytherin table, leaving Luna to twirl through the Great Hall and settle at the fringes of Ravenclaw. “You missed a riveting speech from the Headmistress – James Potter as Defense teacher, huh? That’ll be fun.”

Tom frowns severely, but finds that his anger from earlier has evaporated. “Keep an eye on Luna Lovegood,” he tells his Housemates. “I think she could be an asset to our cause.”

“We have a _cause_?” Theodore asks, dispassionately twirling his fork about his empty dinner plate. “Goodness. This is what Father meant all those years ago when he told me ‘don’t become a minion’, isn’t it?”

“Lovegood’s the one Ginny Weasley’s always hanging around, isn’t she? I always thought she was a bit odd,” says Justin.

Before Tom can cut in, the Headmistress rises, silencing the dull roar of the Hall. The first years shuffle in, a frightened, many-eyed beast being summoned to execution via Hat.

“Bets on where Dahlia’s going to end up?” Harry asks in a low voice, watching as Jared Gore is sent to ‘SLYTHERIN’.

“Ravenclaw,” Tom guesses. “She’ll want to be with Henry.”

“I say Slytherin.”

Tom eyes Dahlia at the head of the Hall, fidgeting with the billowy sleeves of her new uniform, with doubt. “Really?”

“Yup. Loser buys the winner something from Honeydukes?”

“Oh, why not,” Tom says, and they shake on it. He tries very hard not to think of the last time he’d been to Honeydukes: Malfoy and citrus candies and gut-twisting guilt.

He keeps an eye on Harry as the Sorting trundles onward – Niles Harris spends nearly four minutes on the stool before the Hat deems him ‘GRYFFINDOR’. Though Harry’s spirits seem to have been improved by their return to Hogwarts, his smiles still come out a bit crooked.

Eventually, Dahlia’s turn comes. The Hat falls down past her chin, so all they can really see of her is the long, dark length of her hair. After a long minute of deliberation, it finally announces, ‘HUFFLEPUFF!’

James, seated by Lupin at the head table, punches the air, then remembers himself and places his hands back in his lap. He gives the student body an apologetic look, then turns and begins whispering energetically into Lupin’s ear.

“Why is he happy about his daughter going to Hufflepuff?” asks Calcifer. “Wasn’t he a Gryffindor? Shouldn’t he have wanted her to go there?”

“He wants to collect the whole set,” Harry and Tom recite in unison.

Daphne looks deeply disapproving. Peryle grins. Pansy squints. “Wait, by the whole set, you mean –”

“He has one kid in every House,” Harry says. “If you count me ‘n Tom, which he seems to.”

Lyra shakes her head, amused. “Potters.”

Dinner is finally served, and Tom, taking a serving of rosemary potatoes, realizes how famished he is. By the time he leads the Slytherins down to the dungeons, chatting about summer travels and the latest gossip from the Continent, he’s almost forgotten his dark mood from earlier. The others seem just as content. Besides the newfound unity between what was once three feuding factions, there is nothing to suggest they might all have borne witness to a terrible crime that June.

Harry is less subtle than the others, of course, in his own Harry way. Tom thinks about Luna and her Wrackspurts, and wonders whether she might be onto something. It does seem as though a stormcloud is hovering about Harry’s head, giving weight to his silences and making the soft face of his glamour seem flimsier than ever. He’s always been the gloomy sort, but Longbottom’s fate is clearly weighing on him.

They enter the dorms to find the little common room has shifted over the summer to reflect their new group dynamic. Tom savors the moment, looking around at a room done all up in pale green, each chair aligned to the color that had once been just for his and Harry’s seats. And there, against the window, a new chair, high-backed and curlicued.

The others arrange themselves around him like the whorls of a flower: Harry in a wide armchair to his right; Calcifer, Susan, and Daphne closest; and the others scattered about them. Tom settles into his throne-like chair with great satisfaction. He can practically sense Harry rolling his eyes, but even he can’t spoil this moment.

“So,” says Susan, running a hand through her bright hair. “Are we going to talk about… about the Defense exam?”

“Yeah.” Theodore’s bony face creases. “Longbottom said a lot of weird stuff, Tom. I mean, I’m on board, or whatever, but like. She was talking about Unspeakables, and orphaning Harry, and you were talking about, like, trees?”

Tom fingers the wand hidden in his sleeve, weighing his words.

“He has a point,” says Michael. “I mean, what was the deal with the tables turning into evil unicorns?”

“If you’re not careful, he’ll turn the rug into another one… that would show you both,” Calcifer growls. “You oughtn’t question him.”

Tom swallows, folds his legs, and waits until all eyes are on him. “That’s all right, Calcifer. They deserve an explanation.”

Susan shrugs. “Go on, then, Riddle.”

“The Ministry is up to something that involves a… a _resource_ found in the Dark Forest. Alice Longbottom was their operative within the walls of Hogwarts. She orchestrated an extraction of the resource that ended in the deaths of several inhabitants of the Forest – people I considered personal friends. I didn’t realize she was wrapped up in the entire ordeal until the day of the exam, when Harry figured it out and tipped me off with the codeword ‘manticore’. After that, well. You were all there.”

“Okay,” Pansy says. “I mean, that’s all incredibly vague, but I can live with it. But what about everything else? She was talking about the Dark Mantle, wasn’t she? She thought you’re going to bear it?”

“Pansy, dear, he reanimated an old relic of a dragon skeleton. _Without a spell_. I’ll eat my favorite boots if he doesn’t inherit the Mantle.” Daphne frowns, watching Tom.

They’re all looking at him, the same way they had in the wreckage of the Defense classroom, their professor fallen amidst shattered glass and lion’s blood. “That’s all I can tell you,” he says, leaning back in his chair and practically daring them to pry.

“Cool,” says Theodore lazily. “Seriously, though. What’s our ‘ _cause_ ’? Just, like, not getting caught? You’re talking like it’s more than that.”

“Our cause…” Tom thinks of walls flaming with rambling words, promises made under the stars, an eternity of green. “Building our influence within Hogwarts, for now. What happened to Longbottom is going to get out eventually. Snape knows it wasn’t her wand that cast that spell, and he’ll leak at some point. We’ve dirt on him that’s keeping him shut up, but he’s too closely aligned to the Ministry to keep quiet for long.”

They all look very alarmed.

“We’ve got at least until after we graduate, don’t get too worked up,” he says, pursing his lips to hold in a laugh. “By then, we’ll be well-situated enough to weather the storm. In the meantime, networking with other Houses and securing alliances should be our priority –”

Harry sits forward in his chair. The light from the lake catches strangely in his glamoured eyes. “Tom. Shut up.”

Tom bites his tongue, taken off guard.

“Tom is sugarcoating things. Snape isn’t the real threat; the things the Ministry’s doing are. We believe they’re preparing for war, though we’re not sure against who.”

Tom curls his hands into fists, scowling.

Susan’s eyes widen. “My aunt spent most of the summer traveling abroad – normally she likes to take me along on her trips, but this time she didn’t. She made her excuses, but I had the feeling she wasn’t being completely honest…”

“Father kept having Unspeakables over to the house,” Lyra says. “I wrote to you about that, remember, Tom?”

“And Regulus told us, this morning before we got on the train, to study extra hard this year,” Calcifer adds. “But he didn’t – I don’t know. I got the impression that whatever’s going on, the Ministry is _excited_ about it. I don’t know that they’d be quite so thrilled if they were preparing to go to war.”

“You’d be surprised,” Justin says darkly. “The Muggles were excited about the first World War, did you know? And then the war _came_.”

They all quiet, faces youthful with fear.

“Right,” Tom says, clearing his throat. “For the time being, though, we keep our ears open and start expanding our sphere of influence beyond Slytherin.”

Pansy titters. “Starting with Loony Lovegood?”

“Starting with Luna,” Tom says firmly.

“I don’t understand,” Theodore protests. “What’s the point of any of this, if we’re hurtling towards a war? I mean, no amount of networking with other _schoolchildren_ is going to help us dodge the draft.”

“We’re not just schoolchildren,” Harry says. “And our _cause_ is to be more than child soldiers, too.”

There’s a beat of silence. Susan takes Peryle’s hand, looking even smaller than usual.

Michael yawns. “Not that I don’t love making doomsday preparations, but we have class tomorrow. Does anyone have anything to say that can’t wait until morning?”

“You do,” Calcifer says.

Tom raises an expectant brow.

“What? Oh, oh yeah. Tom, would you like to swap roommates with me?”

“Pardon?”

“Michael and I talked over the summer and decided it would be easiest for everyone if you and Harry just shared a room. The current situation is… not very efficient,” Calcifer says tightly.

“‘The current situation’?” Harry says dubiously.

“The two of you are always hanging around in each other’s rooms. It’s like having two roommates instead of one, but like, more awkward,” Michael says. “So if you two room together, neither of us has to deal with all that. You two can have your own little space where you can keep all the fork collections, and Quidditch knickknacks, and Muggle radios your hearts desire.”

“Fork collections?” Harry says.

“Sounds reasonable enough,” Tom says. “Calcifer, I’m sorry if I’ve not been a very good roommate…”

Calcifer looks distressed at the notion. “Of course not, Tom. You’re an excellent roommate. It’s just that Michael asked, and I thought you’d be happier, and –”

Harry’s sigh cuts him short. “Well, _I’m_ going to bed, whichever room it’s in this year.”

Everyone scatters, taking this as a queue for the meeting’s end. Tom finds his things in the room that had once been Harry’s and Michael’s. Even the same bedframe has been moved; he recognizes it by the initials ‘R.A.B.’ carved into the corner of the headboard.

There’s something different about rooming with Harry at Hogwarts than at the Potters. Some combination of the claustrophobia of the dungeons and the freedom of life away from Lily and James’s watchful eyes,Tom supposes. He likes it, likes seeing Harry in pajamas, face naked and vulnerable without his glasses.

“Good night,” Tom tells him, feeling like he ought to say something.

Harry, curled up under his covers, smiles so widely that his dimple emerges. “It’s good to be home.”

Tom falls into his Animagus meditation, shelving his plots and letting the sound of his own heartbeat carry him to bed.

***

They receive their schedules at breakfast the next morning, to varying receptions: “Wednesdays are going to be hell,” Justin says. “Look at this, double Potions followed by History of Magic…”

Harry, who had happily dropped both of those courses, swallows a pleased smile. His own schedule is very forgiving; he only has two classes today, Defense and Charms, and a long free period before lunch.

He peers over at Tom’s schedule and chokes. “Did you choose to drop _anything_?”

“Charms,” Tom says.

“And you’re sticking with _History_?”

“It’s interesting,” he protests. “Well. Some days, at least.”

“Ugh. I’m going to ask Calcifer to take his roommate back if you keep this up.”

“If you keep making jokes like that, one of these days I’m going to start thinking you mean it.”

“And it would break your little heart to think of not being wanted, yes, I know.”

Tom’s eyes smile at him over his goblet of pumpkin juice. “You’re not allowed to talk about my heart if you’re not also making some kind of plant pun.”

As they head to Defense, Harry’s good mood starts to chip away. He starts pondering the realities of what it will be like to see James in the shadow of the dragon skeleton, taking up Longbottom’s helm. Had the curse of the Defense position somehow transferred through him to this timeline? The thought makes him queasy.

The Defense classroom has changed much from Longbottom’s reign, however. Tom’s dragon is gone from the ceiling. Someone had thought to replace the shattered windows with stained glass bearing roses like the ones in the Potters’ garden.

James, perched on his desk, smiles brightly at them. Henry, Hermione, and three other Ravenclaws are clustered in the front row; the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs have yet to arrive.

“Our first class with all four Houses,” Harry comments to Lyra as they follow Tom’s lead and integrate with the Ravenclaws. “Should be interesting…”

There are seven Slytherins in the class. Within the next few minutes, they’re joined by four Hufflepuffs and eight Gryffindors, among them Ron… and Neville. Harry finds himself sitting between Lyra and Tom, with Henry and Hermione in the row in front of him and Ron behind.

He can’t stand to look at Neville. It hurts to be surrounded by these people who are his friends, yet so alien; it hurts to see James, in all his joyous, bearded glory, and identify him as a threat. If James ever figures out what Harry’s done – he retreats from the thought of it, the same self-hating fear that had shadowed him all summer.

Harry locks his eyes onto the messy back of Henry’s head, running through the same breathing exercises he does before a Quidditch match, or for his Animagus meditations. He can be like Henry, bright and eager and innocent. He’s fine.

James hops off his desk, hands in his pockets, grinning roguishly. “This is a bigger N.E.W.T. class than we usually teach in this subject, but you all had quite the chaotic finals period. If I’m remembering correctly, only the Hufflepuffs actually got to complete the exam, right?”

“We only ever took the written exam, sir,” answers Blaise Zabini from among the clump of Hufflepuff students. “We were meant to take the practical the day after the accident.”

“Alice’s policy is to take the top fourteen highest-scoring students on the exam for N.E.W.T.s. Traditionally, this sixth-year cohort is extremely selective, to match the challenging curriculum. However, myself and Headmistress McGonagall have decided to let all interested parties into the course for first term. We’ll have an exam before the holidays, and the top scorers will be invited to continue to second term.”

The class breaks out in whispering. Tom lifts his head, scanning the room. To Harry, he reports, “there are twenty-four of us. They’re going to cut ten people.”

Harry feels a drop of ice spread through his stomach. He’s never struggled with a Defense exam before, but he’s not exactly an incredible test-taker; can he score better than _ten_ of the people in this room?

“I understand that this isn’t quite fair, and that it’s an added stressor to an already stressful year,” James says solemnly. “If you’d prefer to drop out of this course now, maybe leave room for something new in your schedule, the Headmistress has given you all permission to edit your classes accordingly. You have until the end of September to make your choice.”

Another bout of whispering, cut off by James clapping decisively.

“For now, though, we have a lesson to get to,” he says, smiling again in a misguided attempt to bring up the mood of the room. “I thought, since you’re all from different Houses, that we might try a fun getting-to-know-you activity!”

No one seems remotely enthused.

James falters. “We’re going to do an old Auror exercise, not icebreakers. Don’t look so glum.”

He sorts them into two teams, stacks the tables up against the ceiling, summons two strips of elegant cloth, and draws a glittering white line cleanly through the center of the classroom.

“Each team gets a pennant,” he says. “If the other team gets your pennant to their side of the room, they win. Any protection and enhancement spells are fair game. No offensive spells but _Impedimenta_ , and no firing at anyone unless they’re on the same side of the line as you. Got it?”

Harry frowns. “That’s just capture the flag, but with magic,” he says, remembering the time they’d played the game in his primary school P.E. class. He’d been _fast_ , as always, and managed to win the game for his team. Dudley had been so upset that he’d thumped him quite terribly after school, and Harry had feigned illness every subsequent time they played.

Tom – James has put them on the same team – cocks his head to the side. “Perhaps an innovative Muggleborn introduced it to the Auror Department.”

James hands a blue pendant to Hermione and a red one to Gryffindor’s Alex Dippet. “I’m going to give you all five minutes of preparation time. Everyone should spell one of their clothing items the color of their team. Sound good? Good. Okay, planning time starts now!”

Harry stuffs his robe in his bag and charms his shirt red. He and Tom’s team consists of Daphne, Peryle, two Ravenclaws he doesn’t know well, and a vanguard of Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors including Louise Selwyn, who he remembers as the girl Henry despises for no clear reason.

“Right. Who here is good at self-transfiguration?” Tom asks.

Alex, Louise, and a Ravenclaw raise their hands.

“Do any of you know how to give a human wings?”

They shake their heads. Alex gets a bit of a glint in their eyes. “I like the way you think, Riddle.”

“In that case, is anyone willing to be my test subject? I’ve never put wings on a person before either, but I think I could pull it off.”

A Hufflepuff frowns. “I don’t think flying is part of the exercise. We might be best off sticking to _Impedimenta_.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport, Clearwater,” says his friend. “Wings sound like a brilliant idea. I’ll let you give them a try on me, Tom, if no one else wants to risk it.”

Harry sighs. He knows well that Tom wasn’t looking for just any volunteer; if he’s thinking along the same lines as Harry, he’s realized that only one of them can beat Henry in the air. “That’s alright, Hannah,” Harry says. “I’ll do it.”

Tom smiles in a way that probably looks warm to the others, but just strikes Harry as snakelike pleasure. “Perfect,” he says. “So, we’ll have Harry in the sky – he’ll form our primary offence, and Peryle, you’ll go across and back him up. Now, for defensive tactics…”

He goes on, commanding near-strangers with the same easy grace as he does the Slytherins. There is never a debate over who should lead the red team. There’s just Tom, beautiful, clever, alabaster boy that he is. Harry watches his hands gesture and thinks, with some primal satisfaction, how the scars etched so prominently into his right hand are a physical mark of Harry. No matter what else, no matter how many Malfoys Tom kisses or how far he strays, that part of him will always be there, a mirror of Harry himself.

It’s not a nice thought. Harry wishes he could talk to someone about this, someone who could tell him either, ‘ _you really do need to see a therapist about that_ ’ or ‘ _no, that’s normal enough, I think…_ ’. Harry probably does need to see a therapist, weird thing with Tom or not. Maybe one would help him understand all these mad feelings and thoughts ricocheting around his skull.

“Your five minutes are up,” James says, clapping again to draw them out of their little huddles. “Right. Wands drawn – stances – go!”

Just like that, Tom’s at his back, thumb landing on the top of his spine. “Ready?” he whispers.

No one’s moved yet. Both sides are eyeing each other, pacing on opposite sides of the bright line bisecting the classroom. “Yeah,” Harry says breathlessly. _Wings_. Imagine that… if anyone can pull off such an advanced transfiguration, it will be Tom.

He feels the cool spark of a wand against the exposed skin of the back of his neck, right under the Unspeakable’s brand. The transformation seizes him by the bones, and he feels like he’s being pulled up towards the ceiling, like catching hold of Fawkes’ tail feathers and being hoisted up out of the monstrous Chamber below Myrtle’s bathroom.

There’s a pain in his shoulder blades, then deeper, seizing his entire chest – he feels something squirming out of him –

“Oh,” Tom says. “Well, that’s not terribly helpful, now is it…”

Harry contorts, but he can’t quite get a good view of his back.

“Don’t worry, Harry, we’ll get you to the infirmary soon enough,” Tom says. “Oh, no, here comes Henry, that madman… he did _register_ his hawk form, didn’t he? He’d better have, this is enough like cheating as things are. _Impedimenta_! Damn. Someone deal with that bird, please!”

Henry-the-marsh hawk dives past them, blitzingly fast, all sharp talons and wide wings. “ _Impedimenta_ ,” Harry says, and the hawk freezes in the air just as it snatches up the pennant.

“Nice shot,” Tom says. “Here, stand still –”

Harry feels the familiar cracked-egg sensation of a Disillusionment. Tom turns away and throws a warning _Impedimenta_ towards Hermione, toing over the line.

The floaty feeling from whatever Tom had done lingers under Harry’s skin. He leaps over the border as if in a dream, racing for the blue pennant. The Disillusionment works on perhaps half of the other team, but the others shout and start hurling curses. He dodges, feeling a wild laugh build in his throat, and loses himself to the rhythm of combat.

Cast a shield, drop it, return fire, dodge, _run_.

They’ve all noticed him by now, and the Disillusionment flakes away like dried paint off flexing hands. He pelts forward, steps light with Tom’s spell – had he cast a lightening charm on his _bones_? 

Amidst shouts of distress, he manages to snatch up the blue pennant, casting a shield to guard his back.

Peryle has crossed the line into enemy territory, cantering around by the border and trying to draw fire off Harry, but her help isn’t enough. Henry-the-hawk, on the other side of the room, bursts suddenly into motion, throwing himself into the air faster than anyone can shoot him down again.

Harry flings the blue pennant into the air, and as it flies he transfigures it into a snake, thinking of Tom’s handkerchief trick. Half a dozen impediment jinxes hit him in the chest as the shield finally breaks, but the pennant-snake is already too far gone, slithering madly off in a race to cross the line – all too late.

Henry crosses the border with the red pennant, screeching victoriously and falling back into human form. Scarlet streams from his hand, bright in the muted colors of the stained-glass roses.

The Impediments pinning Harry to the floor give out as the blue team lets out victory cries. He stumbles, grinning, calling, “you _cheater_ , Henry, you could have at least tried to play fair!”

“Well done, all of you! I think there were a lot of innovative strategies going on there,” says James. “Next time we play we’ll have to make a new rule about use of Animagus forms, though. I think Henry’s team may have had a bit of an unfair advantage this round.”

Henry just beams, pennant wrapped around his neck, spilling down his front like a stream of fresh blood.

“Now, someone needs to get Harry to the Hospital Wing. I don’t know what you did to his back, Tom, but I don’t think it would be advisable to leave him in that state.”

“I think you might have managed to hollow out my bones,” Harry adds helpfully.

Tom looks rather pleased with himself. The bastard. “C’mon, then, Harry, I’ll escort you.”

He hasn’t returned the black to his shirt. Red suits him so _well_.

***

Harry spends a sleepless night in the infirmary, choking down Skelegrow and enduring the resulting pain with gritted teeth. Tom, it turns out, had indeed managed to hollow out his bones. The ram’s horns curling out of his back are a more unexpected consequence of Tom’s attempted transfiguration, however.

Pomfrey has trouble dealing with that; “stubborn piece of magic, this,” she says. “The Riddle boy’s work, hmm…? Yes, I suppose that fits. Tell him not to throw this kind of spell around willy-nilly, okay, dear?”

Tom comes to collect him in the morning, feigning contrition for Pomfrey. He’s brought Lyra along, though; she _laughs_ when she hears Harry’s diagnosis, completely ruining Tom’s regretful act.

“That’s the second time I’ve imbibed that much Skelegrow,” Harry says once he’s out of the Hospital Wing. “Do you want to know how I dealt with the _first_ man who fucked up my bones?”

“What did he do to you?” Lyra says, intrigued. “I always thought Skelegrow was for pretty serious injuries…”

“Vanished all the bones in my right arm,” Harry says. “Terrible experience. Oh – Tom, really, your response to that should _not_ be to start contemplating ways to use that idea against someone.”

“I’m not,” he says, straight-faced.

Lyra just laughs again.

“We’ve got Dark Studies today, right? Lyra, you’re doing that N.E.W.T., too, aren’t you?”

“Yup.”

They eat a quick breakfast, at Harry’s insistence, then shuffle off to class.

The Dark Studies N.E.W.T. class is much smaller than the Defense one. Theodore and Calcifer are in it with them, as are Henry, Hermione, and Fey Crouch from Ravenclaw. Blaise Zabini is the only Hufflepuff, and there’s only one Gryffindor, a girl with a long nose and several piercings.

“No Malfoy,” Harry observes, puzzled. “He wasn’t in Defense, either.”

“Well, obviously not,” says Tom.

Seeing Harry’s confusion, Lyra clarifies, “Draco’s one of the most Light wizards in our year, Harry. Both of those classes deal heavily in the Dark, and he hasn’t the constitution for it.”

“‘The constitution’?” Harry smiles at the wording.

“The Blacks tend to mostly produce Dark wizards,” Tom says. “Like Lyra. But every generation, there seems to be a Light one sprinkled in the mix. Sirius, for example.”

Lyra nods, smiling. “Never anyone in between, though. It’s funny.”

Snape whirls in, the sleeves of his robe pulled up to his elbows, dark eyes lingering fathomlessly on Harry and Tom.

“The ten of you are, among your peers, those who stand the lowest chance of mutilation by the Dark. By taking this class, you are opening yourselves up to great danger. If any of you fail to take the risks associated with Darkness seriously, you will be expelled from this course without preamble. Am I understood?”

Everyone nods solemnly. Hermione straightens up with restrained eagerness. Henry, at her side, seems similarly excited.

Snape spends the class period going through the course syllabus and scowling. The numbness within Harry creeps back, twining itself around him from the base of his skull to the bony edges of his ankle spurs. The edges of his shoulder blades still hurt when he moves them, twinging with the memory of the ram’s horns. He centers himself on that pain, setting his jaw against the guilt that hits him every time Snape’s dark eyes turn in his direction.

Henry stops him on his way out of class, green eyes serious. Harry tries for a casual smile. “What’s up?”

“We need to talk,” he says. Hermione, at his side, fixes Harry with an unreadable look.

He swallows, shaken. “I – yeah, of course.”

They lead him to the abandoned classroom where they normally hold the inter-House study group. Tom tags along, which they allow. His steady presence sets Harry much more at ease.

Henry scans the hallway, then closes the door with a neat _click_.

Hermione crosses her arms. “Okay, let’s just get into it. You’re not actually a time traveler, are you, Harry?” 

Harry feels his face go very cold and blank. _Oh, Hermione_. Too clever by half. “What makes you say that?”

“You speak using modern slang – not in the kind of mocking way that Tom does, but like you’re accustomed to using it in conversation. You know spells that were only formulated after you supposedly traveled through time. Your name’s not on the list of Quidditch players from any time this century. There are certain mannerisms that people from different eras have – Tom does this thing with his wand, sort of running his fingers along it before he casts a tricky spell. I researched it and found that was a characteristic behavior from the forties, a bunch of older wizards do the same thing –”

“Gideon always told me it helped the magic flow better,” Tom says, frowning.

“Common misconception among your generation,” says Hermione dismissively. “The point is, Harry does none of those things. Plus, there’s the unspeak-seal. I read through dozens of accounts, and couldn’t find one instance of the Unspeakables branding a time traveler from the past.”

Harry swallows.

“So?” Henry says.

“So what?”

“Where _are_ you from, if not Tom’s time?”

“Unspeak-seal, remember? I’m physically incapable of telling you.”

Henry’s face crumples. “I just… there’s so much, right now, that I don’t understand.”

“The Ministry is up to something,” Tom says carefully. Harry looks up at him, surprised. “I don’t know why they branded Harry, but it might be a part of the larger things moving behind the scenes.”

Hermione leans forward. “You’ve noticed, too? The adults are _lying_ to us.”

“There’s something funny about what happened with Professor Longbottom,” Tom agrees, hushed and confidential. Harry feels like vomiting.

“Dad said the Ministry doesn’t know anything about what happened to her,” Henry says.

“Yes. But she spent a lot of time working as an Auror, right? I got the impression she was close with Dumbledore.”

“You think this was a strike against the Ministry?”

“I don’t know the politics of this time well enough to say, but the Ministry is certainly wrapped up in something above our heads.”

Henry bites his lip, practically vibrating with the excitement of a _conspiracy_. “Harry, I know you can’t actually tell us anything, but can you offer any sort of speculation?”

He clears his throat, feeling a headache start in at his temples. “I… I don’t trust the Unspeakables, whatever they might be up to. Aside from that, well. I’ve got nothing.”

“So, it just comes down to what Dad told us,” Henry says. “There’s something strange afoot at Hogwarts.”

“And elsewhere,” Tom says. “I’m sorry we can’t help you unravel this – we’re as lost as the two of you.”

Henry smiles. “We’re in this together, though, the four of us and Draco. Between all of us, we’ll crack it.”

Tom’s eyes glint with a predatory satisfaction that Harry knows the others can’t perceive. “We’ll keep our ears open in Slytherin. You do the same in your House.”

“Will do,” Henry says, eyes bright and green and eager. He shakes Tom’s hand energetically and tows Hermione with him out into the hall.

They watch the Ravenclaws go. Harry feels the nausea in his stomach start to build. “He’s meant to be like a brother to us, Tom.”

“And his father is part of a group that would like to see me dead,” Tom says softly. “If I need to lie for my own survival, I will do it a hundred times over.”

“I don’t know if I can do this.”

Tom swallows, looking sorrowfully down on him. “I have always found myself capable of more monstrous deeds than I’d thought possible.”

Harry considers him, his shadowed eyes and the dark lines of his brows. Monstrous deeds: drowned boys, swallowed by the earth; a madman uncoiling like a viper from a cauldron; blood under squared fingernails; gentle blue eyes going blank –

“I… understand.”

“Harry Potter,” Tom says solemnly. “I swear to you that I will always stand by you, no matter what kind of monster you see in yourself.”

“Tom – I don’t – I want to be a good person.”

“There is no good or evil.”

Harry curls his toes. “Just power?”

“Just necessity, and desire. And choice.”

Harry looks back up at him. He finds himself touching Tom’s face, thumb landing in the hollow of his cheek. Tom’s eyes slip close, his lips parting just slightly. “In that case… I choose to forgive you. For everything you are.”

“And everything that I might become?”

“And that, too.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote a cute (but macabre) [fluffy non-magic high school AU](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24970918/chapters/60450547) featuring dead crows, orchestra rehearsals, and terrible philosophy. If you're like me and you just want these idiots to _kiss already_ , you'll probably like it XD
> 
> Also, we're moving to a slower update schedule to ensure quality -- but worry not, I've written drafts up to chapter 27!  
> 🦅


	18. The Desiccated Mother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom return to the Forest for the first time in months, and find it deeply changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my thanks to [TreeDaddyD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreeDaddyD/pseuds/TreeDaddyD) for their help with this project. It's been an honor to work with you and learn from you <3

Time eases onwards, gentle as falling leaves. Tom loses entire class periods just staring out windows, morbidly transfixed by the changing colors of the hollow Forest. None of the professors notice the fixation, the bloody chapping of his lips, the lack of song in his head. His grades should be slipping; he’s never put such little effort into school. They remain perfect, and that in itself is frustrating, that there is no external sign of his diminishment.

Harry, at least, notices. As Tom slips further into the abyss left by the oaks’ demise, Harry seems to fight his way back to waking. It’s he who charms the lower years, rallies their year mates, and laughs with Hufflepuffs at the weekly study groups. Tom’s autopilot is effective, but not quite enough; Harry fills in for his silences and moments of cold distraction.

The world keeps turning. 

Mid-September, Henry _finally_ makes a move on Draco. He stands up in the middle of the Great Hall just as everyone's tucked into breakfast, a letter clenched tight in his fist, and declares to the Hall that he now has “official, written permission from the heads of House Malfoy to court their son, if he would have me.”

At the Slytherin table, Calcifer and Lyra exchange smug smiles – and a stack of galleons – with Susan. Michael leans back on his bench and lets out a mocking whistle that gets lost in the furor of the Hall.

Tom looks up to the Head Table and sees James with his face buried in his hands, shoulders shaking with unvoiced mirth as Lupin openly laughs next to him.

“Good for them,” Harry says, squinting over at the Ravenclaw table. 

“Quite," Tom says lazily. "I know this is ironic coming from me, but I’m quite certain all that drama wasn't necessary.”

Harry turns, eying Tom warily. “Right. I forgot that you and Draco –” He gives Tom a delicate pat that was probably intended as a commiserating thump. “That you, ah. Had a thing. That you had a thing for Draco – with Draco? Sorry about that one, uh, _mate_ , that’s – that’s rough.” He winces, looking unbearably awkward.

“Harry, I wasn’t dating him because I _liked_ him, I was dating him as a favor to a friend. He was just using me to make Henry jealous.” It’s an effort to keep his voice light. This moment feels deceptively important.

Harry stares at him, mouth just slightly open. “Tom, what the hell? You kissed him. You held hands in the hallway. Pansy says you’ve been _pining_ for him, and that it wasn’t a mutual breakup, and – and what is it with you and _kissing_ people?”

Something warm and smug uncoils in Tom’s stomach. Harry really _has_ been jealous, even if he isn’t as transparent as Henry about it. “Am I going to have to keep telling people that I never kissed Orion? I’ve only ever kissed two people in my life, _counting_ Draco.”

“ _I’ve_ never kissed anyone,” Harry says, looking away, face creased in thought. “Who was the first person?”

“Maybe someday I’ll tell you that story,” Tom says, so low and flirtatious that Lyra looks up from her conversation with Daphne to raise a judgmental eyebrow at him. 

Harry, absorbed with finding the ideal pancake-to-strawberries ratio, does not appear to notice.

Tom sighs and stares gloomily over at the Ravenclaw table, where Henry and Draco have started busily snogging. Why couldn’t he have chosen someone more sensible to crush on? _Draco_ doesn’t have to worry about _his_ Potter not understanding his intentions.

***

Henry and Draco’s drama, though entertaining, proves an impotent distraction from Tom’s thoughts of desolation.

Two nights later, he dreams himself running through the woods on Fennel’s back. Dew-damp leaves sting his face, vicious and unseen. He holds tightly to Fennel’s mane, pushing his eyes closed.

Behind them, something howls like the wind shaking the Astronomy Tower. Almost against his will, Tom turns to look, eyes forced open to witness the creatures that pursue them in glimpses of starlight silver.

Tooth and pounding feet. The silhouettes of pricked ears. Fennel’s blood spilling like mercury from his cottondown heels. Behind the beasts stands a man-shaped figure, impossibly keeping pace with the unicorn. Through the lashing growth and the chaos of the night, Tom sees three points of terrible light: two eyes seeking him through the darkness, and the shining barrel of a gun.

A noise like thunder, and Fennel drops, silent, to the ground. Tom falls with him, impotent, heartbeat slamming through his body as if looking for a way out.

The terror lingers even as the details of the nightmare fade. Tom gradually becomes aware of Harry’s hand on his shoulder and the sound of his breath ringing through the absolute black of their room.

“They’re going to kill me, Harry,” Tom whispers, hating the admission. “They’re probably right to, aren’t they? You saw – you saw me, didn’t you – the monster. That’s the thing that was in your mind that day, in the Room of Requirement…”

“ _Expecto Patronum_ ,” Harry whispers. A puff of silver smoke filters out of his wand, illuminating him crouched by Tom’s bedside. “Fuck. _Expecto Patronum_.”

“That’s alright, though,” Tom says distantly, breath coming faster. “Even if I ought to die, I won’t let them kill me… I…”

“They’re not right to want to kill you.”

Tom reaches for Harry through the thick night, taking his hand and running his thumb over the ridges and dips of its scars. It’s easier, somehow, to concentrate on Harry’s distress than his own. “I can’t cast a Patronus, you know.”

“Because it’s too Light?”

“Yes. But I used to want, desperately, to learn to conjure one. I know all the theory.”

Harry’s fingers curl slightly in his grasp.

“The problem isn’t with you, and it’s not with the stag. It’s the memory you use; it’s lost its power.”

“Tom –”

“You just need to find a new one,” Tom says, trying to ignore the incessant thudding of his heart. “A memory that makes you feel lighter than air, something the emptiness couldn’t take if it tried.”

He wants so badly to kiss Harry, fumble for his lips in the darkness, fold their bodies together and curl around him under the covers, so they wake up warm and soft in the cold of the dungeons.

He doesn’t. It would be a good kiss, of course – he could sit up right now and take Harry’s face, lead them out of this twilight of little touches and glances. But Tom’s never kissed someone and _meant_ it before.

Harry’s left hand comes up and touches his hair, so feather-light that Tom shivers. Then he rises, returning to his own bed with a rustle, and Tom feels his absence like a knife in his side. He forces himself back asleep, hugging himself to ward away the sweet ache. 

***

It’s been a year now since Tom, ringed by wildflowers in the unicorns’ clearing, promised Harry he wouldn’t go looking for his family. 

Time limit expired, he immerses himself in Hogwarts’ genealogy records. There’s a small circular table in the center of the German history section, far enough from the windows that he can forget the wrongness in the Forest. Hardly any students bother him there, and any who try are quickly turned away by what Harry calls Tom’s ‘polite murder face’.

Harry comes with him some days, just to sit with him as he frowns over essays and textbooks.

“Aren’t you going to warn me away again?” Tom asked the first time.

Harry shrugged, scowling, and said, “I trust you. I think.”

And Harry’s presence _does_ ease the tedium of the search. Tom looks for _Marvolos_ and finds dozens scattered through the ages, but Harry looks at each one and just shakes his head. Tom’s escalating frustration over the string of lost leads has given some of the history books a hunched posture, like bats lined up on the walls of a cave.

Their other diversion, the Animagus transformation, proves far more fruitful. Sharing a bedroom with his partner in crime makes things easy. They brew the potion in the secrecy of their dorm, ferreting away their owl-borne ingredients and doing homework as they stir. A week before Halloween, the full moon rises clear and bright in the sky, and the leaves adhered to the sides of their cheeks are ready to be spat, fragmented and pulpy, into the brew. “Now all that’s left is the thunderstorm,” Tom says, staring into the swirling black of the potion. “And the continuation of the meditation, of course.”

“Have you felt the ‘second heartbeat’ that book described yet?”

“Not yet. As far as I can tell, we’ll only arrive at that stage in the hours just before the storm. It’s meant to be a sign for the Animagus-to-be to go outdoors and seek the lightning, according to the literature.”

“Right.” Harry frowns. “I assume we’re going to do it in the Forest?”

They haven’t been back yet. It’s starting to dig its claws into Tom, though, the festering sense of _wrongness_ to the woods. Even Peryle had stayed in the castle over the summer months. When Tom tries to ask her about it, she just gives him a long look, says ‘surely you can feel _it_ ,’ and leaves him to his thoughts. There’s been no word from the other centaurs. No sight of the unicorns. Even their Care of Magical Creatures class, by some rare show of sense by Grubbly-Plank, has started meeting inside the castle.

“I suppose that’s really the only place to do it,” Tom says reluctantly. “Unless you want to go stand around on the roof of the Astronomy Tower…?”

Harry snickers. “Oh, I’ll bet you anything that’s what James and the others did.”

“Oh no – you might be right. Good god.” Tom smiles at the thought of it, imaging Sirius baring defiant teeth up at the storming sky, the stag’s fresh hooves scrabbling for purchase against the slats of the roof, Lily’s wild laughter morphing into the howl of a fox.

The shadow of a fish whispers by the window. Harry rubs at the bony edges of his wrists, face folding in on itself. “I’m afraid that I won’t be a – a nice animal.”

“Why would you want to be a _nice animal_? What does that even mean?”

Harry shrugs, eyes unreadable. “I don’t think I’m going to be a hawk, at least. I’m sure of that much.”

“How do you know?” Tom has no inkling, yet, of what his animal will be. He’d thought snake, before, but now… now, he’s not quite sure.

“Doesn’t feel right,” Harry says shortly.

“So animal forms aren’t genetic, if we trust your intuition,” Tom muses. He _does_ trust Harry’s intuition. He’s never known Harry to be wrong about something like this.

Harry shrugs. His eyes have gone distant, his hand reaching up to hover over his heart.

***

Snape lectures for an entire hour on the properties of enchanted ivory. Harry drowses, letting the thin warmth of the lingering summer sun lure him into a gentle trance. He finds his quill tracing out the edges of a fern frond where there should be notes, a fractal pattern twisting out from stem to leaves, branching and eternal. Tom, sat beside him, seems in a similar state, all lengthy blinks and hair hanging limply down past his ears.

At last, the bell rings, breathing energy into the sleepy classroom and sending Tom’s eyes flying open in a brief moment of startlement.

“Did you absorb a word of that lecture?” Harry asks him under the scraping and shuffle of their classmates going on their way.

Tom gives Harry a look that he’s sure is meant to be very disparaging and intimidating, but mostly just looks exhausted.

“Are you ever going to tell me what’s wrong with you?”

“There’s nothing _wrong_ with me, I’m just – tired. You know I’ve been sleeping poorly.”

“Tom –”

Tom scowls, grabbing his hand and dragging him out of the classroom. Calcifer waits for them in the hall, looking pinched and a bit wild. Harry still doesn’t trust him. Calcifer’s devotion to Tom reminds him of Barty Crouch Jr. Since the dragon, it’s grown into a fanatical thing, a vicious reminder of what Tom truly is. His ‘potential for monsterhood,’ as Longbottom had put it.

Harry needs to talk to Neville. He needs to never talk to Neville again.

He needs – he needs to go back to the Forest. There’s a pulsing tug at his bones, an ache in the place where the oak’s song used to vibrate.

Calcifer and Tom make a turn for the library, but Harry catches Tom by the sleeve. “I – we should go study outside. It’s so nice today.”

Tom blinks twice, focusing on him with apparent difficulty. “I need to look through that Alacánt text, remember?”

“I just thought you could use a bit of fresh air,” Harry says pointedly, foot beginning to tap along to the ghost of a melody.

“I do n – Harry, I’m _fine_.”

“You’re falling asleep on your feet. A bit of a walk would do you good.”

Calcifer scowls at him.

Harry makes a lukewarm attempt to smile back at him. “Tom, what was the subject of the lecture we just attended?”

“Dark Studies.”

“You don’t remember.”

Tom stares down at him, eyes dark and dangerous. Harry’s growth spurt over the summer hasn’t been nearly enough to smooth out the disparity between their heights. “Does it matter? I know all the material.”

“A year ago, all you did was talk to me about the importance of grades and paying attention in class.”

“My grades aren’t in trouble,” Tom growls.

“What about your health?”

Calcifer puffs himself up. “Harry, he _said_ he’s _fine_. Your insistence on pushing him is verging on impolite.”

“Oh, sod off, Calcifer,” Harry snaps.

“ _Excuse_ me?”

Tom glances between them, distant amusement shadowing his face.

“You heard me.”

“Look, _Partridge_ , I don’t know why you think you can go around telling Tom what to do, but it’s _really_ not your place. Now if you’d just –”

“‘Not my place’?” What are you on about?”

“You know, I’ve never met a pureblood quite as ignorant as you are. You aren’t worthy of standing as Tom’s second.”

Calcifer has drawn his wand. Harry takes a step back, pulling his own wand from his back pocket. “Are you looking for a fight, Lestrange? I’ll give you one, but I don’t think you’ll like the way it ends.”

Tom steps between them, amusement gone. “If you two are going to duel, at least have the sense to do it away from prying eyes.”

Indeed, a trio of younger students has stopped in the hall, watching the three Slytherins through wary eyes.

Harry swallows frustration, trying to catch his breath.

“Of course, Tom,” Calcifer says smoothly, slipping his wand back up his sleeve and glaring at Harry. “Let’s be off, then.”

Tom hesitates, biting his lip.

“Wait –” Harry says, then pauses, frustrated. “ _Tom. We need to go to the Forest. I’m tired of your moping_.”

The Parseltongue freezes Calcifer in his tracks. Tom’s eyes darken.

“You –” Calcifer has gone a bit green, untied hair flying about his face. “I don’t – I’m sorry? How –”

Harry sneers. “Let’s go, Tom.”

Tom frowns, turning to stare Calcifer down. “We’ll discuss this later,” he says. “Keep any… _conjecture_ to yourself in the meantime.”

Calcifer nods, hooded eyes still trained, shocked, on Harry.

Harry strides away, twitchy with irritation, barely checking to make sure Tom follows.

“What are you playing at?” Tom murmurs as he trails him down to the first floor. “Parseltongue isn’t a toy to be tossed around, not when you’re dealing with wizards. And Calcifer’s an _ally_. I thought you two got along.”

“Calcifer’s a _leech_ ,” Harry snaps. “I just… I don’t have the energy today to deal with him today.” He lowers his voice. “The Forest’s calling me again, Tom. We can’t put off investigating it for much longer. Don’t try and deny that’s what’s at the heart of your ‘trouble sleeping’ – you’re guilty.”

“We tried our hardest to save the oaks, but the Forest is _dead_ , Harry. It’s not safe to go out there. I’m not – I'm not _guilty_. There’s nothing more I could have done for them.”

“There are people still living in there. Peryle’s herd… they’re not dead. There’s _something_ calling me.”

“You’re missing the point –” Tom stops abruptly, grabbing Harry by the elbow. “Hello, Lovegood. Did you need something?”

Luna, the golden-haired girl who Geoff sometimes invites over, has melted out of some adjacent hallway to intercept them. She’s wearing three scarves, none of them around her neck, and playing with the one knotted around her right arm. “I want to come with you,” she says.

They stare at her, Harry remembering that Tom had voiced a desire to recruit her.

“You’re going off to the Forest, aren’t you?” she says. Her bony fingers curl anxiously around the pink threading of her scarf.

“No,” Tom says firmly.

Luna isn’t looking at them, but her disappointment is obvious.

“ _Yes_ , Tom, we are.”

“It does seem like you’re walking in that direction,” Luna says.

“We are going to go on a – a cleansing stroll about the grounds so that Harry _stops asking after my mental health_ ,” Tom says through gritted teeth. He shakes out his hand, clearly making an effort to reign in his lingering irritation. “If you would like to tag along, I suppose you’re welcome.”

A tiny smile bows Luna’s mouth. She looks like a Muggle imagining of a fairy, with her delicate, pointed features and enormous blue eyes.

And so, they set off on a walk around the lake with a fifth year Ravenclaw, of all people, walking in their shadows. While Harry and Tom bicker over which potato dish served by the Hogwarts elves is superior, Luna kicks rocks around and imitates birdsong.

They’re on the end of the lake opposite the castle when Luna, walking some meters in front of them, stops in the pathway and turns to the Forest. There’s a curious stillness to her body, like a viola string in the crisp moment before the bow’s descent.

Harry feels it a breath later. A wave of desert-dry air, a constriction in his throat, some half-awake part of him whispering to _move_ , either charge the threat or run. There’s something waiting for them through the trees, beyond sight and hearing. It feels old, and dangerous beyond belief.

Harry starts moving towards the Forest.

Tom lunges after him, pulling him back by the shoulder. “What are you doing?” His voice is higher than usual.

“You said the call of the oaks was like appointing a leader, back in pre-Roman times,” Harry says tightly. “You said we owe our lives, our magic, _everything_ to the Forest. We have a duty, Tom, and I’ll – I’ll go fulfill it with or without you.”

The hand on his shoulder trembles. “I almost died, last time,” Tom says hoarsely. “Filobrix, Agatha… I can’t go back.”

“The manticore’s gone, Tom. Whatever is in there, festering – it’s different.”

“You don’t understand, I’ve had such terrible dreams – I _can’t_.”

“Then don’t,” Harry says, not trusting himself to look back and see Tom’s face. What was it that Tom had said that summer? ‘You make me want to be brave’? What rubbish.

Luna, trembling like a leaf, says, “I’ll come with you, Harry.”

Harry strides forward, shaking Tom off with a half-intended spark of static. Luna grabs for his hand, the unscarred left, and sticks close to his side as he slips away from Tom, into the shadow of the Forest.

Autumn is at its peak, sending the deciduous trees ablaze. The pines keep hold of their green, standing pockets of darkness amidst the blitz of orange and sunlight. There’s a stifling closeness to it all. Harry feels parched, withering, like he’s wandered into a desert.

The warbling cry of a bird rips through the unnatural silence. Leaves crackle; Tom, following them, has jumped, eyes wide and startled at the sudden call.

Harry holds out his scarred hand. Tom takes it, squeezes. He looks wan. _You_ are _brave_ , Harry realizes. _You may be afraid, but that doesn’t make you a coward_.

“What _is_ it?” Luna asks, holding tightly enough to Harry’s hand to cut off circulation.

Harry breathes in. There’s a dark, fruity scent to the air, like blackberries overripe in the thick of midsummer. A primal fear batters against the walls of his ribcage, and he feels glad for the presence of the others.

He steps forward, toward the origin of the strange, dry wind. Tom’s wand, held aloft in his non-dominant hand, shivers. The pads of Harry’s feet feel prickly and strange.

They walk for some indeterminate length of time. Harry becomes gradually more certain that the geography of the Forest has changed. He had spent the bulk of the last year wandering this landscape, but now it feels vastly unfamiliar. Just here, he should see that little gorge where the ashwinders liked to sunbathe – and over to the north, the tallest alder tree in the Forest should dominate the skyline. None of it is there, just an endless loop of black pines and fiery, falling leaves.

Harry thinks his palms ought to be sweating, but the oppressive dryness leaves them as empty of moisture as parchment. The blackberry scent has grown thicker. He can taste it in the back of his throat.

The trees around them are darkening, he thinks. Perhaps evening is falling. Perhaps it’s some quality to the maples here, some darker red pigment common to their leaves. Things watch them from between the trees, just on the edge of vision. It’s not unusual for the Forest, but somehow the hidden eyes seem malicious now, hungry. _Thirsty_.

The trees thin out, and the ground under their feet transitions into a steep incline. Harry realizes, with an unpleasant jolt, that they are on the path to the oak grove. Given the route they’ve taken, that should be impossible.

Tom falters. The thinned canopy lets shafts of light filter down to them, turning Tom’s irises the color of honey. His pupils are swollen with the same adrenal pulse Harry feels in himself.

Luna stares out behind them, mouth set in a way that makes Harry afraid to turn and follow her gaze.

Harry pulls on each of their hands, tugging them all up the hill. His lips are cracked from dehydration, his skin itchy and peeling. The sky is a flat blue, peering angrily down at them through the vibrant canopy.

They break the tree line into a clearing left raw and empty without the oaks. There’s something strange about the ground here. Milky tendrils like cobwebs spread over the tufty grass.

The clearing is as wrecked as he remembers, marred by great slashes in the soil and the haphazard, leaning stumps of the oaks. But layered over the destruction is that same glistening layer of ephemeral _something_.

Luna drops his hand, kneeling to examine the ground. She reaches a finger out toward the stuff. “That’s funny… it looks almost like horsehair.”

“Don’t touch that,” Tom snaps, and her hand leaps back.

He’s staring up at the crest of the hill. Dread sharpening in his stomach, Harry follows his gaze upward.

A tree stands above them – at least, that’s what he thinks at first. How had he not noticed it before? As soon as his mind has catalogued it, though, he realizes he’s mistaken. The light shines so strangely off of the shape that he had been confused. Now that he’s looking at it again, he can see it’s a statue – of a man? A woman?

No. No, it’s not a statue at all, but a figure, watching them in return. Or, he thinks, blinking desperately, not something at the top of the hill at all, but rather a cloud formation playing tricks on his eyes – an enormous sun-white stag – the prow of a ship, its figurehead blank-eyed and horrible –

“Tom? What – what is that?”

“The Mother,” Tom whispers. He’s gripping Harry’s scarred wrist so tightly that he’ll have bruises later, deep purple smudges nestled among the white of his cracked-mirror skin. “I’ve been such a fool.”

The thing on the hill – the Mother – pulses angrily, burningly bright. Harry feels as though the spittle is evaporating straight out of his mouth. The sun, falling from its apex, seems to dim. The blue of the sky slips into twilight.

Luna takes a step forward, then another.

“Luna!” Harry calls. The air can’t hold his voice; it’s too full of a buzzing too low to hear, something he feels in his bones, shivering up his boots from the ground itself.

It’s like night, now, the light of the thing at the center of the once-glade blazing so brightly that the sky looks black. There is no color in the world, no warmth, just the dry flesh of Tom’s hand in his and the yawning thirst.

They should never have come to this place.

Luna continues up the hill, stride growing smoother. In a flash of certainty, Harry knows the intent of the thing-that-was-the-Mother, knows that this thirst belongs to it. It wants Luna’s magic, her lifeblood. It wants Harry’s.

Tom, now, is the one dragging them forwards, pulling Harry with him towards Luna. Harry bolts forward to grab her hand and hold her back. Out of the shadow of the trees, the thing in the clearing is more horrible than ever. The sickly, glistening tendrils wind up his boots, gossamer-thin and shining, tugging at him like spider-spun Devil’s Snare.

He wrenches his right foot up off the ground and stamps down, crushing the tendrils away, and starts off in the direction they had come. The other two hold him back, one on each side – Luna still fixated on the Mother, Tom staring in the other direction, wand held out at something in the shadow of the wood. He shakes his head, mouth forming words Harry can’t hear, pointing into the unfathomable shadows beyond.

Something’s there, in the wood, lingering in the shadows. They don’t flee from his vision, now; he can see the white flashes of their eyes, their silhouettes: somewhere between men and wolves. They circle at the edge of the trees, blocking any hope of return.

Harry wants to reach for his wand, but it seems more important, somehow, to keep hold of Tom’s and Luna’s hands.

There’s a magnetic pull, an inevitability, to the thing up the hill. Luna pulls on his hand, gentle and insistent, her enormous blue eyes locked upwards.

Harry should be afraid, but the buzzing at the edge of comprehension is too all-encompassing. He can’t think through it, can’t _feel_ …

Tom’s mouth is forming words again, words he must _know_ Harry can’t hear. He looks wild and strange. _His_ fear response, Harry realizes, is not suppressed; he’s terrified. Desperate.

It’s this, finally, that sparks some shard of emotion in Harry’s chest. Tom’s terror. It’s been months since they fought together in this clearing, but the sight of Tom, sobbing into the red darkness of the manticore’s wing, composure shattered irreparably, heart a wreck in his chest, still haunts Harry.

He blinks, hard, and a tear falls free from his lashes, hurtling up and away, towards the thing. He’s surprised he still has water enough to cry.

Luna tugs again at his hand, more urgently now. Harry feels it, too, stronger now, the pull towards the desiccated Mother.

He takes a step toward the crest of the hill, and it’s relieving. _D_ _o it again_ , something whispers. _Come to me, green-eyes_.

Tom steps with him, mouth contorted, wand aloft. A spell leaps from the bone-white length of it, something nasty and curling, seething with Darkness. The white glow devours the curse hungrily, and the pull of the thing grows stronger still.

Luna, in a sudden move, tears her hand away from his. She stumbles away from him, towards the crest of the hill. He moves to follow, but Tom drags him bodily backwards, holding him tight against his chest.

“No,” he tries to shout. He reaches for his wand to cast sticking charms at Luna’s boots, but they never reach their target, leeched away by the swirling brightness.

The thirst reaches a pitch. Harry can’t tell where his begins and the Mother’s ends. It seems that it would be better, perhaps, to bleed out onto the ruined forest floor, ease the thirst… perhaps that, finally, would relieve the parched misery of his own dry mouth…

Luna takes another step. Her hair is illuminated by the bright terror before them. She seems otherworldly, a ghost caught in a moonbeam.

Harry wriggles in Tom’s grasp – he needs to do something, help Luna, _go to the Mother, appease the thirst_ – the helplessness of it all shreds him, toes to crown. His magic leaks out in bursts – he tries to hold it in, afraid of hurting Tom, but the brilliant vortex sucks it away before it can form into anything.

The pull subsides momentarily, as if sated, then surges back. Luna moves closer still to the center.

_As if sated_ … Perhaps Harry can quiet it with something more than blood, lure it into complacency long enough to get Luna away.

“ _Expecto Patronum_ ,” he tries, clinging to the image of James smiling at him, Lily laughing. It’s the most powerful spell he knows – surely –

The spell doesn’t work. He dredges deeper within himself, searching for a happy memory. Through the ceaseless buzzing vibration of the earth, he still can’t _feel_. He grasps for memories, but they seem slippery and insubstantial, leached of color by the monster looming before him. A tiny boy, staring up into the glass of a dusty mirror, choking on desire – Lupin spinning stories in an empty classroom – reconciling with Ron after the First Task – “ _Expecto Patronum_!”

Perhaps he produces some milky thread of smoke with this attempt, but it’s whirled away as fast as he can summon it.

Tom’s right hand is pinned against his, holding both their arms tight against Harry’s body. The scars feel electric, cords standing out against the rest of his parched flesh. Tom trembles, from his chest up against Harry’s back to the tip of his wand, aimed now at the Mother.

The shard of emotion ignites. _Oh_ , Harry thinks. “ _Expecto Patronum_ ,” he whispers into the pulsing chaos.

Something leaps from his wand, hooved and half again as bright as the monstrosity on the hill. The Patronus holds together, unlike the other spells, charging fiercely forward, leaping over Luna and plunging toward the Mother.

The pull subsides, just as Harry had hoped, and he and Tom stumble backwards. Color returns to the world in a flash, though all seems dim and strange. An afterimage is burned into Harry’s eyes. When he blinks, it resolves into different shapes: a rose, a woman’s face, the wings of a bird.

Luna turns, blinking a strange milky film out of her eyes, then whirls and sprints again up to the apex of the hill.

Cursing – and stumbling in surprise at being able to _hear_ again – Harry throws off Tom’s shock-slack embrace and runs after her.

The Mother is gone from the clearing. The standing stone sprouts from the ground where she had been, the runes etched into it looking twisted and strange. Harry’s Patronus watches them from beside the stone, touching its horn to something at its base.

A human skull, larger than it should be, surrounded by far too many bones for a single person. A spindly seedling, growing crookedly out of the ribcage, leaves painted in shadowy silver. Harry licks his lips and finds moisture in his mouth once more.

“ _Incendio_ ,” orders Tom from behind him.

“ _Incendio,_ ” Harry repeats obediently. Fire spills from his wand in a thick stream, catching on the baby tree as if the slick glitter to its leaves were gasoline.

A weight on Harry’s lungs seems to ease as he watches the thing burn, though his Patronus skitters away from the blaze, tossing its head in consternation.

The three of them stand in silence, watching the seedling fall away into ash. Harry casts the spell again, ensuring the destruction of the root system.

“What was wrong with it?” asks Luna eventually. “I thought oaks were meant to sing…”

“That one was born of death, without anything to sustain it but the body of it – its host,” Tom says. “It would have drained everything out of the Forest in another couple of years. I’ve never heard of the oaks reproducing, but I’m sure it’s not something that’s meant to happen without the support of the colony to raise the young one.”

“You said it was the Mother,” Harry says. “So, so what, she was the – the host? Tom –”

“I don’t _know_ , Harry – look at this, though, it had her magic – and it’s not like anything else would have a skeleton like this –”

“Shut up,” Harry says, turning on Tom and seizing him by the robes. He pulls them off his shoulders, then tugs up the hem of his shirt.

Tom stumbles back, blushing furiously. “What are you _doing_ , Potter?”

“If she was a ‘host’ – you have a chunk of oak imbedded in your chest, idiot, what does that make you? Fuck, we have to get that thing _out_ –”

“I’ll die without it, Harry, _stop_ , bloody hell, _don’t fucking touch me_.”

Harry takes a step back, boot crunching through bone. Part of him relishes the snapping brutality of it, the crunch of withered cartilage.

Luna watches on with wide, mad eyes. ‘ _Loony_ ,’ Pansy had called her.

Tom tucks his shirt back into his trousers, throat tensing and bobbing. “We’re leaving well enough alone,” he says slowly, voice level. “If the… the prosthetic… if it does something strange, I’ll tell you. And if I –” his throat bobs again. “If I die, burn my corpse until nothing of it remains.”

Harry hesitates.

Tom frowns, eyes darkening. “ _You have to stop_ questioning _me, Harry. It makes me look weak_.”

“ _You’re such a goddamn Slytherin, Tom. Sometimes you’re_ wrong.”

Luna, who has found the manticore’s dried up skeleton on the other side of the clearing, looks up at the sound of Parseltongue. “You two have an awful lot of secrets, don’t you? Dahlia told me you did, but I didn’t quite expect all of this.”

Tom looks away, expression loosening. “Your Patronus changed.”

The Patronus has lain down in the ashes of the twisted seedling, looking serene and mournful.

“What does it mean?”

“That it’s a unicorn?” Harry dismisses the conjuration with a delicate flick of his wand. “Hell if I know.”

“Liar,” Tom breathes, swaying on his feet.

Luna looks up from her inspection of the manticore’s great skull.

“Why did you follow it?” Harry asks her, gesturing to the ashes of the seedling. “It would have emptied you out, Luna. It would have gotten all of us, if I didn’t get lucky with the Patronus.”

Luna fiddles mournfully with the blue-and-yellow scarf tied around her hair. “They called to me for years, is all. But I never went deep into the woods – I stuck to the safe parts of the Forest. The thestral’s gulch, that lovely spot where the river bends, out to the south…”

Harry raises his brows. Those spots are not what he would call the ‘safe parts of the Forest.’

“I heard them in April, the day they died. I was in Divination at the time, and everyone was pretending to meditate. I could have slipped out of class and come to help. Maybe then they wouldn’t have…”

To Harry’s shock, she begins to cry, great glossy tears tracing lines down to her wobbly chin.

“And then I came here, and saw how horrible it was, the things they did to them, and it was calling, too, the little one, and I thought maybe I could at least save _it_ …”

Harry and Tom exchange a glance. Harry reaches out his hand to Luna, but she ignores it, pulling him into an awkward hug. He endures her burying her snotty face in his shoulder, patting her on the back for a moment before going limp.

“You’re not a very good hugger,” she tells him, great lamplike eyes turning towards the ground.

“I know.”

“Especially for someone with a unicorn Patronus.”

He laughs at that, short and breathy.

The field of bones feels confining, suddenly. The Mother’s is not the only centaur skeleton scattered at their feet. There’s something glinting in the grass halfway down the hill. A diamond ring. Harry thinks of the craggy old Mistress of the Dark Market and feels a sudden wave of nausea. “We should get back to the castle,” he says. “This time of year, night comes on quickly.”

Luna hesitates. “Did you have to kill it?” she asks in a small voice.

“Yes,” Tom says. “Have you not been paying attention? It was going to drink our fluids and drain our magic.”

“‘Drink our fluids’,” Harry giggles, then realizes he might be in shock. “That’s… funny. I think.”

“The watchers have gone,” says Luna, turning her head to the tree line. “We should get moving. They’ll come back when dusk falls.” Indeed, there is no sign of the shadow creatures that had blocked their retreat.

By unspoken agreement, they take each other’s hands again, wandering through the woods in a straggling line. The landscape of the Forest is still completely alien to them; Tom has to use _Point me_ to reorient them on five separate occasions.

The sun has dipped dangerously close to the horizon by the time they find their way out of the trees. They come out at the back of the castle, far away from their starting point by the Black Lake.

They let Luna wander off once they file in a side door. Harry sets off towards the dungeons, wanting nothing more than to fall into his bed and empty himself of all thought.

“Wait,” Tom says, taking his wrist. Harry turns, quizzical. “I wanted to apologize. For being so uncommunicative.”

The flare of warmth in his chest returns, flooding away his numbness some. “Uncommunicative?”

“For not talking about things with you. I’ve had difficulty, ah, _functioning_ for this past month. You were… you were right. To try and talk with me.”

Harry shifts, feeling the warmth travel into his face. “I’m sorry my solution was to put us all in mortal danger. I shouldn’t have dragged us out to the Forest.”

Tom smiles. “And?”

“You’re turning into Lily,” Harry scoffs. “ _And_ I’m sorry for trying to duel Calcifer, and using Parseltongue carelessly, and… and, er…”

“Running off after Luna and putting yourself further in harm’s way?”

“I saved her life! You should be apologizing to _me_ for trying to hold me back.”

Tom blinks. “I’m _not_ sorry for that, though.”

“Oh, Tom.”

“I’d miss you, if you got eaten by an evil pseudo-immortal forest god,” Tom says, making a strange face. “You understand that, right, Harry?”

“No one wants anyone to get eaten.”

“No, Harry, that’s not what I mean… If you, _you in particular_ , were to get hurt, it would make me feel… bad. Really bad. It’s important to me that you’re okay.”

Harry picks dirt out from under his nails. He doesn’t know why Tom is making such a big deal out of this, but it’s making him uncomfortable.

“I just don’t like it when you put yourself in danger, that’s all,” Tom sighs. “I – if you can’t take care of yourself for your own sake, do it for mine.”

Hermione once said something similar to him, eyes big and brown and sorrowful. “Yeah, okay,” Harry says. “Let’s go to bed now, all right?”

That night, faithfully doing his Animagus meditations, he thinks he can feel something new inside. A weight on his skull, strength in his limbs, the whispering pull of _run-run-run-run-run_ thundering into the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guESS WHO'S BACK
> 
> gonna be aiming for updates every sunday ~(o.o)~


	19. The Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Animagus potion finally reaches its full maturity.

Halloween at Hogwarts is all singing pumpkins and spider cider. Harry remembers Tom saying something last year about how he missed the darkness of a forties era ‘Hollow’s Eve’. Calcifer had launched into a rant about Muggle influence on modern celebrations, and their full dorm had gotten pulled into a debate over the important of tradition versus the allure of sweets.

Harry should probably talk to Calcifer, come to think of it. It’s been days since their scuffle, but he still seems angry.

Worse, Tom proves unwilling to even acknowledge the conflict between his two closest friends. “T’would be churlish to side with one of my vassals over the other,” he’d told Harry the day before, laughing at Harry’s resulting eyeroll.

But today is a day of celebration, and Harry’s mood is greatly improved by the sight of the breakfast table laden with sweet puddings and caramel apples. He joins Lyra and Pansy in an idle conversation about the history of the arcade machines’ installation, content to set his worries aside in favor of sweet food and good company.

The mail arrives in a flurry of feathers and spilled apple juice. Death Star swoops down with a letter from Lily reminding him to look out for Dahlia in Hufflepuff – and keep an eye on James and Remus, the pair of whom could get into ‘serious trouble if left unsupervised’.

Harry’s rummaging in his bag for a quill to respond when he notices a change in the texture of sound around him. Conversations have dimmed to harsh whispers, and the Ravenclaw table burbles with scattered chatter masking a somber hush. Up at the head table, Snape and Lupin look deep in conversation, scanning an edition of the _Daily Prophet_.

Harry’s eyes find Tom, sitting over by Susan and Peryle. Susan has received a _Prophet_ of her own, and the three of them pore over it together.

“What’s happened?” Harry asks Theodore, who’s frowning at his own paper.

He feels a clenched dread in his gut, an archaic worry – what if the article is about him, or Voldemort? What if it holds some new scrap of gossip for Malfoy to tease him with? It’s a ridiculous concern, of course, but there’s a reason Harry _still_ doesn’t order the paper in this fresh timeline. Somewhere out there, he’s sure, Rita Skeeter is just waiting to write awful things about the people he loves…

“There’s been a vanishing,” Theodore says. “The McKinnons, down south… the Aurors found their house completely hollowed out, with no sign of a magical struggle.”

“Oh,” Harry says, calming down.

Theo frowns. “‘ _Oh_ ’? Nothing like this has happened in ages! This could have something to do with whatever is happening with the Ministry, the – the _plots_ or whatever that you and Tom are worried about.”

Harry frowns, leaning back on his bench. “You’re right,” he says, newly intrigued. This isn’t the wizarding world he’d grown up in. Here, vanishings are not just distressing, but _surprising_. “What else does it say?”

Theodore rolls his eyes and tosses the paper over. There’s not a lot to the article. Just a blaring headline and an image of the house itself, the weathervane on its roof spinning wildly.

A restrained buzz of chaos saturates the school for the rest of the day. In Charms, Mandy Brocklehurst manages to Vanish poor Terry Boot’s canine teeth while she’s distracted chatting with Delia Diggle; Harry hears rumors of an explosion during the fifth-years’ Potions class; and a particularly jumpy Ravenclaw sends Pansy to the infirmary with tentacles squirming out of her ears.

Lupin suspends the day’s Transfiguration lesson, saying, “I used to be an Auror, as most of you know, so I thought I would use today’s class period for a questions session. What concerns do you all have, given the news this morning?”

Harry thinks the entire thing is very silly. They’re _wizards_. Vanishings should be par for the course. Hell, no one had reacted to even his supposed time travel with this amount of shock.

“That’s the thing,” says Lyra when he voices this. “Magical accidents _happen_. Wizards are always getting into trouble and ending up on the other side of the country, or the other side of the _world_ – or five decades in the future, I suppose. But normally there’s some sort of fallout. Residue, in the place they vanished from. Aurors know to scan for it… they can usually tell when something like that has happened.”

“They couldn’t find anything on this case.” Harry frowns. “So, what happened?”

“They got mixed up in a magical accident outside of their home,” Lyra says offhandedly, ticking up one finger. “They left of their own volition, for some reason? Uh… they got on the wrong side of someone with enough power to run a coverup. They were taken out by someone who could dispel their magical signature. Or… or they were killed by non-magical means, I suppose.”

“All bad options,” Harry agrees, slumping.

“And d’you know _how_ the Aurors knew something was up? The neighbors received a Patronus asking them to get help. It vanished right after delivering the message.”

“So whatever happened to them happened inside the house, and wasn’t orchestrated by the McKinnons,” Harry says. “And then they… what, died?”

Lyra shrugs. “ _That’s_ why everyone’s in such a tizzy.”

Later that day, partnered with Peryle for Herbology, Harry asks, “when was the last time you went into the Forest?”

She looks down at him. “Why are you asking?”

“Tom and I went back,” he says neutrally.

She falters in her careful pruning of a Gibbering Garlic plant. “And… did you happen to see any of my herd while you were there?”

_Just the dead ones_. “No. It’s kind of a mess in there… I – you didn’t go back over the summer, did you?”

“I was there for about a month before things got bad.”

“Others stayed?”

Peryle looks away from her work, considering him through abyssal eyes. “Half my herd left. They followed my mother’s sister deeper into the mountains, hoping to find someplace untouched by the soul-drought. The rest decided they would sooner take their chances with oblivion than abandon the Mother.”

Harry lets the conversation rest as he sprinkles a dash of water on the garlic’s leaves, prompting a low grumble from the plant. He makes a note beside the sketch in his notebook. “We killed her.”

Trying to rise, Peryle hits her spindly kneecaps on the lip of the table. “ _What_?”

Susan, at the next table over, looks up from her work to frown at Harry, as if blaming him for her girlfriend’s upset.

Peryle waves her off, wiping away her grimace of pain. “Harry, say that again.”

“Well – the Mother was already dead. We killed the thing that had eaten her magic, though.”

“The… what thing?”

“It looked like an oak seedling, but _not_. I don’t quite understand what it was.”

Peryle squints pensively down at her notes.

“I think whatever we did must have ended the, er, the ‘soul-drought’, though. So, ah, it might be safe now to go back, if you want to try and find your herd.”

“Thank you for telling me,” she says eventually. “I will take that under consideration. But Harry, do understand. If I learn that you and Riddle killed the Mother without sufficient cause…”

He swallows. “Er, who said Tom was involved?”

“With you? Tom is always involved, one way or another.”

“Fair enough,” he admits, rueful. “Peryle, we wouldn’t have done it if we had another choice. You know us.”

“I would not give Riddle any awards for _empathy_.”

“He’s only really cruel if he’s angry,” Harry protests, then remembers who he’s talking about and frowns. “Well. Or if he’s desperately bored. But he really cared for the Mother, you know. He loves the Forest. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt either.”

“Even to save his own skin?”

Harry shrugs, uncomfortable.

Peryle sighs. “That’s all right, green-eyes. I trust you.”

They return to their schoolwork, lapsing into a surprisingly comfortable silence. Harry’s penchant for self-hatred notwithstanding, something about Peryle’s slow acceptance loosens the guilty knot in his chest.

***

Tom breaks awake in early November, seized by the sudden awareness of a coming storm.

He lies, quiet as the dead, in the perfect darkness of the midnight dorm. Twin heartbeats shudder within him, like thundering hoof falls.

“Tom?” Harry’s voice, rusty with sleep.

“You feel it, too.” Tom presses a hand over his own chest, feeling the urgent thumping of the wooden heart within.

“I – yes. Yes! Er, _Lumos_.” Harry sits up in the light of his wand, hair rumpled and shirt askew. He’s grinning, teeth bright in the shadows.

“We’re going, then?” he says, swinging his feet out of bed, fingers moving with an electric, unfocused impatience. “Right now? Or is the heartbeat just to tell us that there’ll be a storm in the next… I dunno, week, or something?”

There’s something infectious about his energy. Tom starts to feel the same excitement building in himself, tangy and bright. “We’ll go out now,” he decides. “If the storm isn’t building yet, we’ll just sleep out there. That’s what weekends are for, right?”

“Venturing alone into the Forest in the middle of a lightning storm? At _night_? Sounds dangerous.” For all his words of caution, though, there’s something hot and hungry in Harry.

“We can handle ourselves,” Tom says. Normally, he thinks, he would be scared, but now, with two heartbeats shimmering under his skin, with Harry like _this_ … “It’s what the Marauders would do in our place, yeah?”

Harry bares his teeth in sharp joy and climbs out of bed. Tom follows suit, kneeling to dislodge a cobble from the floor. Below the floor bubbles the potion they’ve spent months brewing, dark and cinnamon-smelling. He dips two vials into the cauldron, stops both up and tucks them into the pocket of his thick winter robes.

They slip together into the dark of the common room. Here, a beam of moonlight penetrates the lake, painting vacant furniture in muted ripples of green.

The dungeon hallways are dark as the sea at night. Harry, perhaps as wary as Tom of being caught out of bed by some patrolling teacher, does not cast _Lumos_. They find their way by touch, hands against the damp stone of the walls.

Tom follows the sound of Harry’s shuffling footsteps and his shallow breathing. He knows this part of the castle better even than he once knew the halls of Wool’s, but something about the darkness stretches space. He keeps finding turns where he doesn’t expect them, or doorways set into what he had thought were blank stretches of wall.

Hogwarts herself playing tricks on a student out of bed, he thinks. Or perhaps just his mind fooling him, falling into an adrenaline-fueled disorientation only encouraged by the strange sensation of the double heartbeat.

He’s thankful, either way, when Harry’s footsteps stop and he hears, “we’ve made it to the stairs, now, Tom – be careful that you don’t trip on the first step, this is the one that’s a bit shorter than it ought to be…”

Up the stairs, they emerge out of the complete darkness into the half-light of the first-floor corridor, where refracted moonbeams render the castle in grayscale. The deeper darkness of Harry’s head shifts, perhaps checking to make sure Tom’s still following. Then the inkblot of his body moves forward, silent now, watchful.

Tom creeps after him, looking around. There’s something exciting about breaking the rules like this, venturing into this strange silvery rendition of Hogwarts. The castle at night seems home to a different kind of magic than during the day –

“ _Lumos_ ,” a voice says in lazy disdain.

Illuminated by a wand that belongs to neither Tom nor Harry, their surroundings seem horribly mundane, crowded with portraits awakened by the sudden light. The garish red of the rug at their feet gleams like a taunt. Tom feels his sense of adventure flee him.

Severus Snape’s face looms, spectral, from its harsh surroundings. “Mister Riddle. Mister Partridge. Fancy meeting you here at – ah, _three in the morning_. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

It's then that Tom realizes that Snape has been putting on a polite air in the classroom and in front of Lily. There’s real hatred in those black eyes. A shiver climbs its way up his spine; Snape is far from a shabby duelist. If he feels truly threatened by Tom and Harry, this dim corner of the sleeping castle is the last place Tom wants to be.

Harry gives him a pointed look: Tom can almost hear his voice. ‘ _You’re the one who’s good at lying, Tom… Well? Go on. Handle this._ ’

But Snape won’t respond well to a lie. When Tom had struck that deal with him, he’d sacrificed the delicate veneer of respect between student and professor. In making his threat, Tom had opened himself up to threats in return – and Snape is a Legilimens.

“There’s a storm coming, Professor,” he says evenly.

“Perhaps there is,” Snape says. “What a quaint little game, Riddle. Are we stating truths? Here’s another: you two will be going back to bed. I’ll be taking twenty points _each_ from Slytherin House.”

Harry makes a face like he’s not impressed with the point deduction. Tom elbows him before he can say something horrible like, ‘I’ve had worse, _sir_.’

“What are you doing up at this hour?” Snape says. “Sneaking about with your outdoor cloaks on over… owlet-patterned pajamas, Partridge? Really? You know, that _Obliviate_ was quite something. I assume you cast it, Riddle. I’ve a friend at Mungo’s who told me he’d never seen such a severe case of blowback, even from an adult with magic as strong as poor, dear Alice’s. A bit overkill, wouldn’t you say…?

“Well, that’s beside the point. What are two children with a history of criminal misdemeanors up to tonight? You can’t expect me to believe you’re off to go goggle at gathering storms.”

“We were going for a bit of a stroll on the grounds,” Tom says. “Both of us have trouble with nightmares, and taking a walk can help settle us… We always go together, of course, for safety when we’re near the Forest.” It’s all true, technically, though they haven’t gone on a nighttime stroll since their summer on the Potter estate.

“I’m sorry to break this news to you, _Mister_ Riddle, but in the modern day no one is above the rules here at Hogwarts castle. No matter how… _prodigious_ you might be.”

“Yes, sir,” Tom says tightly, mind crunching through plans. They might need to resign themselves to waiting for morning to chase storms.

Hawkish face etched in disgust, Snape gestures for them to return to the dungeons, limping in their wake. Tom grits his teeth against the indignity of being escorted back to Slytherin, but holds his spine straight and proud.

“And I’ll be administering a detention to you both. Monday evening.”

Tom’s shadow flickers and bends in the stairwell, crisp against the stone. His echoing heart feels like it’s about to jump up his throat.

“Lily will be hearing about this, too. Oh, yes… something tells me she will not be overly pleased to hear about the misadventures of her surrogate progeny.”

They come, finally, to the common room entrance. “ _Jimmy Magma_ ,” Harry tells the stretch of wall. It unfurls before them, a great archway.

Harry steps through, but Tom hesitates. Snape’s beady black eyes shine in the wandlight – he cocks his head, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowing.

He’s sniffing the air, Tom realizes, and steps hurriedly through the archway into the safe, dim room –

Snape seizes him by the front of his robe, halting his attempted retreat. Tom freezes, shocked. “Sir?”

“Waiting for a storm, were you?” Snape says, his breathing harsh. “I see now. Thought you were being clever, did you? Don’t think I can’t recognize the scent of mature _bragu bwystfil_. Trying to take after Henry and his friends, were you? But probably with no interest in being registered.”

Tom takes another step backward, forcing Snape to release his robes.

“ _Accio_ vials,” Snape says, and the two corked samples of potion fly into his hands. “Aha. _Well_ , now. This is a much more serious misdemeanor than simply wandering the castle in the depths of night, isn’t it, boys?”

The plans all fall through. Tom makes a desperate gesture at Harry behind his back.

“No, in light of _this_ – I don’t think it would be quite responsible to send the two of you back to bed. I think we’d be best off going to the Headmistress and seeing what _she_ thinks would be the wisest course of action given the circumstances.”

Three fingers held behind Tom’s back. Two.

One.

“ _Stupefy_ ,” Tom growls.

Snape shrugs off the roiling purple Stunner with barely a blink. “I was _hoping_ you’d pull something like that,” he says with a delighted sneer.

“ _Expelliarmus_ ,” Harry says.

Snape puts up a shield, but the spell fractures it, penetrating and sending Snape’s black wand tumbling from his grasp.

Those black eyes go wide, now. Scared.

“ _Stupefy_ ,” Tom incants once more, viciously satisfied.

Snape crumples, boneless, all shadow and grease heaped upon the dirty flagstones of the dungeon floor.

Harry looks down at their professor’s wand in his hand, clearly shellshocked. “We can’t keep pulling stunts like this.”

Tom shrugs. “How else are we meant to take advantage of your shield-shattering prowess?” He kneels by the professor’s side, placing his wand to his temple. Snape’s face is still lined in a memory of terror.

“ _Tom_. No.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

“Not making a habit of fucking with our professor’s memories?”

“So, what, you want to just leave him with information like this? Come now, Harry.”

Harry sets his jaw. In his left hand, Snape’s wand still burns with _Lumos_.

“Go stand over there so you have plausible deniability. I’ll do it.”

They head out of the dungeons a minute or so later, a memory-altered Snape levitating behind them.

They find Snape’s office quickly. Tom settles him on a chair in front of his fireplace, placing his wand on the table beside him and snatching the vials from his hand. Harry watches with crossed arms.

“You’re not angry at me again, are you?” Tom asks, exasperated.

Harry scowls.

“You – you do this thing, when you’re mad, where you just shut people out. Harry, I thought we were past that sort of thing. I understand, believe me, that sometimes it’s difficult to deal with emotions like that. But you can’t just… not with _me_. We’ve been through too much together, now.”

“I… we kind of are above the rules, aren’t we,” Harry admits, a tiny smile playing about his lips as he considers Snape’s slumped form.

“We’re _prodigious_ ,” Tom says smugly.

Harry smiles for real, dimpled and soft. “We got freakishly lucky.”

They creep back into the hallway. Feeling wary, Tom casts a spell on himself that lets him see the world in heat signatures. On their way to the courtyard, he spots a little scrap of warmth heading for them around a corner and pulls Harry into a broom closet.

“What?” Harry says. The heat detection spell has lit him up from inside, centering on his head and torso. He looks like a constellation, stars framing his shoulders, his jaw, the length of his neck. The glamour, Tom realizes, does not extend to his heat signature. He can make out Harry’s true face outlined in starry pinpricks.

“I saw some kind of animal,” Tom says, forcing himself to concentrate.

“Did it look like a cat? Might be Mrs. Norris.”

Tom blinks. “Our caretaker had a cat called Mrs. Norris, too. How strange.”

“Skinny thing with great yellow eyes?”

“Exactly. Huh… I knew kneazles could have long lifespans, but that seems extreme even for them.”

Through the door, the white heat signature passes and fades from view. Tom takes Harry by the hand and tugs him out into the hall.

Out on the grounds, the wind blows strong and true. Clouds build on the horizon, hanging like a threat over the mountains. In defiance of the coming storm, the sky looms clear and vast, dotted with the faraway light of the Milky Way.

The grass under their feet is wet with dew. Tom wants to take his boots off, race through the night, laugh and dance and teach Harry how to kiss. He bites his tongue, feeling hollow and bursting all at once. _The animal heart_ , he tells himself. It’s the unfinished transformation that’s making him feel like this: messy and glorious and unhinged.

Harry looks up at him, eyes full of starlight. Tom can’t help but reach for him with his scarred hand, pulling off the pendant hidden under his robes.

Harry tucks the necklace into a pocket, looking thoughtful, eyes scraps of vibrant color through the silver night.

“You should be yourself,” Tom explains, “before you become something new.”

Harry licks his lips. “That makes no sense.”

Tom shrugs, smiling as prettily as he can muster.

Next thing he knows, one of them gives into that restless instinct, the high of the coming change, and they’re sprinting. They chase each other across the grounds, to the edge of the Forest, linger on the threshold – then enter, with caution, Tom wheezing a little from his unsteady wooden heart.

Tom finds Harry’s hand again in the dark. The Forest has changed again. No longer pulsing with ancient magic; no longer gripped by a supernatural drought. Just wet with the expectation of the storm, trees bent by a thousand years of shadows.

It’s not safe in this place. It never was. Tom had told himself, once, that he had mastered the Forest, but it is a wilder beast than he had ever imagined.

He presses forward anyway, letting the canopy fold him into a lattice of branches and roots, rabbit dung and sickly white mushrooms. Specters linger between trees, watching from a distance. Tom arches his neck, challenging; he’s still not sure what they are, what they might want, but he tells himself they’re keeping their distance out of fear.

As they venture deeper, the foliage grows thick enough to dim the stars. There’s a delightful edge of danger to the night, though Tom can’t tell whether it’s from the storm bearing down on them or just Harry’s bright anticipation lending a spark to the darkness.

“What now?” Harry asks eventually, as they come upon a grove of maple trees. An unfamiliar brook traces a path through the forest floor, sparkling like silver hammered in a long line through the landscape. “We just find somewhere that seems like a likely place to get struck by lightning?”

Tom laughs. “The lightning will find us. We need a place where we can wait in comfort for the storm to gather.”

They follow the little river, at a loss for what else to do with themselves. Far upstream, it dissolves into a waterfall, tumbling like mercury over the edge of a cliff. Harry sits close to the edge, dangling his feet over the drop. Tom sits next to him, but at a more sensible distance from the cliffside.

From here, they can see over the Forest, up to the yawning expanse of the sky. The storm has spread its wings to lift off from the foothills, darker than the space between the stars.

“Now all we have to do is wait,” Tom says, shifting closer. “In the meantime, what would you like to do? I didn’t think to bring any classwork, but I suppose we could take a little nap…”

Harry snickers.

“Do you have a better idea?” Tom asks, leaning close. He shouldn’t be pushing like this, but at this manic edge between sleeping and waking, with his heartbeat echoing against itself and the storm on the horizon tingling in the pads of his fingers, he can’t hold himself back.

“Sing to me,” Harry says, rather than respond to the flirtation.

“What?”

“I miss your singing. I haven’t heard you sing since – since April.”

Tom grumbles, but he’s secretly pleased.

He sings silly songs for Harry, about cauldrons with chicken feet and lost moon rabbits – wizarding songs his old friend Druella had taught him in the months after she finally accepted that Tom was more magically powerful than her.

At some point, they both end up lying down against the wet grass at the cliffside. Harry rests his head against Tom’s stomach, and the singing subsides gradually into a bashful hum.

Tom drowses, imagining he can read the spinning of the planet in the incremental movements of the stars, letting his mind weave fanciful webs for his entertainment. He lapses into a half-dream of roses and sunlight, the scent of sage thick on the breeze.

The next thing he knows, the warm weight against his core is gone. The stars have been obscured by a blanket of roiling clouds.

A drop of water hits his face, impacting hard enough to make him blink; the wind’s picked up. He sits up to see Harry standing at the edge of the cliff, arms spread wide in welcome.

The bulk of the storm arrives in the next moment, lashing Tom’s hair out of his face and carrying Harry’s ecstatic laughter. Tom sees no lightning, but a growling clap of thunder shakes the air as Harry turns, his eyes as vibrant as the warning colors of a poisonous frog.

The rain picks up, cold and sharp, pulling Tom forcibly awake. Far above it all beats the sound of his doubled heartbeat, shuddering up through the soles of his feet. His skin feels tight, every hair standing on end, arms pebbled with gooseflesh.

Tom pulls the two vials from his cloak, offering one to Harry.

Harry takes the vial with his left hand and reaches out to Tom with the right, clasping their hands between the planes of their bodies so their scars line up.

Another peal of thunder rattles them. This time, Tom glimpses a flash of lightning reflected in Harry’s impossible eyes.

He feels a shiver of breathless dread in him, some echo of distant panic. Harry’s wet face grounds him, from the strange new lines of his true jaw to the familiar fractal scar, bared by the wind.

Another fork of lightning strikes closer still. It illuminates every strand of Harry’s hair from behind. He looks, in that moment, more animal than boy, alien in his beauty. _Vanquisher_ , Tom thinks.

And then a third bolt, lancing down from the sky to strike the space between them.

The resulting crash of thunder is world-shattering – the grass around their feet bursts into flames, then just as quickly extinguishes in the deluge – the two of them are fine. Fine, save the rampaging terror of Tom’s heart, the scrambling double-time pulse.

The potion in the vials has gone the red of fresh blood. Harry’s watching him expectantly, apparently unfazed by the electricity in the air.

Tom untangles their hands, reaching for the cork of the now-mature potion. He braces himself.

Harry, hair on end, expression wild, nods.

As one, they open their vials and throw the contents down their throats. The potion tastes salty, at first, then coppery and earthy and minty – then like the sharp tang of pomegranate –

Then just like _pain_ , a sharp, horrible agony blossoming in Tom’s windpipe and down to his guts. He doubles over, dropping the vial, and curls into himself in the grass, feeling the potion spread through his veins, eating its way through his extremities.

His first thought is that something has gone terribly wrong. But no, the books had said to expect pain – he just hadn’t anticipated _this_ …

It’s changing him, he realizes with belated terror. Ripping his cells apart, forming him into something not fully human. ‘ _The Animagus is not merely a person with an alternate form_ ,’ the book he’d taken from the Potters’ had read, ‘ _but rather a composite being. In accepting the transformation, one reduces humanity to a mere aspect, easily exchanged for a more bestial nature; the reality of the self is irrevocably changed._ ’

The thought of it hadn’t worried him, before. He’d looked at the Animagi in his life: Lily, James, Sirius, Remus, that rat-man Pettigrew, Henry, Hermione, Draco. None of them had said anything about this, losing themselves to the animal.

Tom feels his bones preparing to shift under his skin. A terrible pressure builds behind his eyes, and his spine itches and squirms.

The pain has gone, now, leaving in its place the precipice belying the change. He can feel the grass under his cheek, can taste rain and fire and the sharp danger of the cliffside.

There’s a shape, etched into his eyelids. An afterimage from the lightning strike. He strains, trying to make it out – he can see legs, perhaps, and a tail –

But then he’s falling, the transformation coming upon him with the same suddenness as the storm. It happens in his bones, first. They swell, growing large enough that he’s afraid they’ll split the skin.

Then his flesh changes, stretches, muscles pulling taught in strange new places. His neck burns with the strain of his vertebrae elongating, arching, twisting. The pain behind his eyes sharpens, then the skin of his forehead bursts – he can just barely hear it over the double heartbeat, the tearing noise as the skin above his eyes cleaves to yield something new.

Tom reaches up to touch himself, feel the length of his jaw and hard muscle of his chest, but this new body doesn’t bend like that. He’s shivering, wet, cold. He wants to wail like a newborn human child, mouth searching for a teat. There’s a new instinct underlying that, though, something calling him to his feet.

His new legs are long. He can’t quite see them; his vision is blurry and distorted, clouded with the gray of the storm. They tremble under his weight, but don’t bend. He sways. Four limbs, planted in the mud. Limited sensation from each of them. Three digits, perhaps, on his forelegs. Two on his back legs.

This body is made for running. Tom will run – _no_. There is a cliff nearby. He needs to stand still, to give himself the time to become accustomed to his new eyes and take stock of this unfamiliar flesh.

He shakes himself off, throwing droplets of damp out into the night. It’s a strangely natural gesture. Head to long neck to round shoulders to flowing tail. He stamps his feet – hooves? – impatiently. He wants to run.

He mustn’t run.

He wants –

Something hits him in the side of his now-long neck, and he rears, letting out a high noise of outrage. His eyes focus – he realizes, now, that he’d had such trouble seeing because he was looking through them the wrong way. They are affixed to the side of his head, not the front, as his first body was accustomed.

The storm has subsided slightly. He can see the river, the edge of the cliff, the burn of dawn brightening the edges of the distant mountain range. He stills for a moment, fascinated by that line of candle-colored light. Soon the sun will rise, and the last drizzling remnants of the storm will be wrought in polished gold…

Something hits him again. This time he recognizes the gesture as play, another animal trying to get his attention. He turns to it, regal, not sure he wants to reciprocate.

The other animal is horned and fleecy. It has bright green eyes, and Tom feels, for some reason, that this is a good reason to trust it.

He shoves it in return, a gentle nudge at its shoulder with his nose, and it bleats in excitement and darts away into the woods, checking over its shoulder to track if he’s following.

With a great leap of excitement, Tom charges after it. They ford the river, trample through ferns, delight in the wet light of dawn. He remembers being worried, some faraway time ago… there’s something niggling away at the back of his mind, but he has no time for that now. He has long, fresh legs. He was made to run, so run he shall.

***

The sun is at its apex when the two girls find them. The bigger of the two has hair the color of dried grass. She raises her hand to him, skittish. He prances, shakes out his mane, dances after his fleecy companion.

The second girl, tiny and dark haired, makes a joyous noise like birdsong. Tom’s friend wheels about, bounding over a patch of brambles to stand by the little girl, pushing its curling horns into her chest in a gentle greeting.

A moment later, Tom’s friend is gone, replaced by a new human who stumbles, needing the little one’s help to stabilize him on his two knobbly legs.

Tom shies back, surprised.

“Hush,” says the honey-gold girl. She’s at his side, now, looking up at him with wondering blue eyes. He calms under her gaze. “Don’t you think it’s time you turned back now, Tom?” she says softly.

He understands the words, tastes a strain of gentle worry on the air.

Tom’s mind returns with a shake of his long head. He’s disappointed – he’d thought he had better control than to have lost himself in this new form.

He finds the seed of humanity in himself, that chink of ice that he had been ignoring, and _pulls_.

Limbs retract, white horsehair falls away, and the wet wool of his winter cloak settles around his shoulders. Tom exhales, feeling strange, not quite at home in the body that has held him for nearly seventeen years, now.

“You’re beautiful, you know,” Luna tells him. “As the unicorn.”

He touches the unblemished skin of his forehead. “How could you even tell it was us? How are you _here_?”

“Dahlia always knows things like that,” Luna beams. “And the wood of your heart stays with you between forms.”

“You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” Tom asks warily. He and Harry can get themselves registered, if needed, but he would really prefer to keep the transformations a secret. Neither of their animal forms are half as useful as a hawk, or even a snake, but they will serve them well if the Ministry attempts to make good on Longbottom’s threats.

“Don’t be silly,” she says.

Harry and Dahlia hobble over, both radiant in the noon light.

“So you’re a sheep?” Tom asks, smiling broadly. _So much for the great prophesied ‘vanquisher’, huh_?

“He’s a _ram_ ,” Dahlia says, glaring. “And a very handsome one, too.”

“Let’s get back to the castle,” Harry says, rolling his eyes. He looks pleased, though, with his animal form.

He’d been worried, Tom remembers, that he wouldn’t be a ‘nice animal’. Well, this ought to ease his concerns; Tom can’t imagine anything more wholesome than a _sheep_.

Other than a unicorn, of course. Goddamn it all. Not that Tom has anything against unicorns. Why, some of his best friends are unicorns! It’s just – well. He’d rather hoped for something intimidating. A python, perhaps, or a wolf.

He and Luna fall in step, wandering behind the Potter siblings on their way back to Hogwarts.

“Harry’s not very good with words, you know,” Luna tells him softly, looking down at her mismatched socks.

Tom bristles. “Harry’s very clever; it’s not his fault he can’t – can’t write essays well, or whatever you’re on about.”

“I don’t mean that… it’s just, everyone expresses love in different ways. Words, or touch, or actions. And if you’re looking for… for something from him, if you’re _waiting_ for him, you shouldn’t be waiting for him to _say_ something. I – does that make any sense?”

“Not really.”

“His Wrackspurt infestation is gone. I think you scared them all away.”

“So, you think I’m scary?” he asks hopefully, still stuck on the whole unicorn thing.

She scowls at a nearby tree. “You’re terrifying, Tom. Not so much today, maybe… but in general.”

“Good.” They walk for a while in silence.

“So, about Harry…”

“He’s rubbish at communicating. I know.”

“Just because _you’re_ good with words doesn’t mean he can interpret them. I think the two of you are speaking different languages to each other, that’s all.”

Tom turns this over in his head for a moment. “You are very wise, Luna Lovegood.”

To his surprise, she ducks her head. “People usually just tell me to ‘piss off’ when I say things like that.”

Ahead of them, Harry has suddenly stopped in the path. “ _Fuck_ ,” he says, patting his pockets.

Tom blinks, confused for a moment. Then Harry pulls out a heavy amulet and loops it around his neck, returning his face to its usual soft edges and upturned nose.

“Why didn’t either of you say something?” he gripes, adjusting his glasses. “The Unspeakables would be furious with me.”

“I don’t like it when you hide your normal face,” Dahlia says. “You remind me of Henry with it. I like that.”

Luna just blinks at Harry. “I hadn’t even noticed,” she says.

Harry makes eye contact with Tom and pulls a face of such exaggerated suffering that he can’t help but laugh, and soon the two of them are doubled over, wheezing in exhausted hilarity.

The girls look on with some degree of concern.

Tom watches Harry, his gray eyes shining in the sunlight. He thinks of curving ram’s horns, the halo of his hair against a backdrop of lightning.

_I will learn to speak your language_ , he vows. Whatever he calls himself, Potter or Partridge; whichever face he wears; whether he’s a boy or a beast – Tom cannot imagine these feelings will go away. It’s a bit like accepting the transformation, the thought of it. Falling, falling…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry is a Jacob's sheep, which are majestic as hell. They have _four whole horns_! I highly recommend looking up pictures. (If you're familiar with eighth gen Pokemon, he's basically Dubwool). I have a lot of reasons for that choice, but they're complicated. If there's demand, I could write up an explanation on my tumblr, but it's be too long-winded to put here ;P
> 
> [casparelli](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/) created some absolutely breathtaking fan art of a scene in this fic! They made a comic based on chapter 16 that is just. The best thing ever. Seriously, I have no words for how beautiful it is. Go check it out and send them my love: [(Part 1)](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/post/633894778221854720/part-1-part-2-part-3-part4-is-coming-soon) [(Part 2)](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/post/633975114593091584/part-two-of-the-minicomic-inspired-by-the) [(Part 3)](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/post/634079747072278528/part-3-of-the-minicomic-inspired-by-the-incredible)


	20. Inclement Weather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom seeks advice, Harry plays a lackluster game of Quidditch, and bad news comes to the Potters.

“Tom? Uh, hi,” says Pansy, opening the door to her dorm. “What’s up?”

“I need advice,” he says. “Let me in, please. This is too sensitive for the hallway.”

She stands aside, smirking. Tom strides past her and finds himself suddenly surrounded by Slytherins: not just Pansy’s roommate, Daphne, but also Lyra and Michael.

“Hello, everyone,” he says slowly. “I’m sorry, am I interrupting a plotting session? How very _rude_ of me.”

“We weren’t plotting _against you_ , Tom,” Lyra protests.

Michael hums and wiggles his hand.

“You said you have something _sensitive_ that you need advice on?” Daphne leans forward, grinning dangerously.

“I wanted advice from Pansy, not a full committee. Now, if I am – ah, _extraneous_ to your proceedings, I think I’ll be on my way.” Tom surveils them again, frowning. It’s strange to see this group of people without Calcifer. It looks as though he’s been replaced in some capacity by Daphne.

“Wait!” Pansy says. “How’s this – you talk to the lot of us about whatever the problem is, and we’ll let you in on our plotting.”

They all nod eagerly, clearly ravenous at the prospect of getting some gossip on Tom Riddle himself. _Pawns_. “Fine,” says Tom, who is just as bad.

Pansy and Lyra shove over on Pansy’s bed so Tom can sit between them.

“Well?” he asks, crossing his legs and turning to Daphne.

She shrugs, tossing a sheet of pale hair over her shoulder. “We were mostly talking about dear Justin.”

“He’s been dodgy lately,” says Michael. “He’s got this funny altered Muggle device that he says he designed himself, but he never lets anyone get a good look at it. We even sent Theo to go poke around their room and he couldn’t find the thing.”

“He says it’s a game,” Lyra says. “Which makes sense, but it’s got a lot more buttons than any game I’ve ever seen.”

Tom makes the least impressed face he can muster. “Not much of a conspiracy, is it?”

“There’s other stuff, too,” Michael says. “He seems really stressed, he’s been quiet… it’s not normal behavior for him, Tom. I mean, you know Justin: he loves people. It’s weird for him to be so withdrawn. And with all the time he spends playing that game…”

“You think he might have gotten his hands on a cursed artifact,” Tom realizes. Dark artifacts with obsession enchantments are extremely dangerous and worryingly common.

“There’s no way to tell for sure,” Pansy says. “We’re just keeping an eye on him for now, waiting for a concrete reason to go to a professor about it. So, there you are: that’s what we’ve been talking about. Now, spill.”

Tom glances around, chewing on the inside of his cheek. This was a mistake. He misses his time, when everyone was properly frightened of him. Perhaps he should have gone to the Ravenclaws with this – Draco, surely, would not have led him astray.

“You said you needed advice?” Daphne prompts, not looking remotely amused by his hesitance. “Go on, then.”

“Oh, this is a romance thing, isn’t it.” Pansy leans into him. He flinches away and ends up sandwiched tightly between her and Lyra.

“I thought the thing between you and Draco was a mutual breakup,” Michael says. “I mean, I’m sorry, but he and Henry Potter have been ready to break out the marriage vows for the past, like, three years. You never had a chance.”

“Tom’s not an idiot,” Daphne sniffs. “He _knows_.”

There’s a moment of silent contemplation. Michael frowns. “So then who…”

Pansy screams and seizes Tom by the shoulders. “I knew it! I told you, Michael, didn’t I –”

Tom stands abruptly, with a sound like a thunderclap. Pansy pulls her hands back, shaking them as if burned. They all stare at him. “No more touching,” he says, glaring.

“I apologize,” Pansy says, not looking at him. “That was out of line.”

Tom weighs the benefits of just picking himself up and leaving. The unicorn urges him to gore them all and run. They already know too much.

“So you’ve got a crush on your best friend,” Lyra shrugs. “Join the club, Riddle.”

They all blink at her.

“What?” she says. “Between Eliza, Peryle, Susan, and Harry – and you, Tom, obviously – half the bloody House is in the same position.”

“Lyra,” Pansy says carefully. “Peryle and Susan are dating.”

“Yup. ‘Cause they’ve got crushes on each other.”

“What do you mean, Eliza’s got a crush on her best friend?” Daphne says a bit shrilly.

“Wait,” Tom says. “ _Harry_?”

Lyra frowns. “I’m pretty sure. He’s hard to read, most of the time, but he didn’t much like you dating Draco, did he?”

“He certainly wasn’t meant to,” Tom growls.

Pansy makes a wheezing noise. “Wait, were _you_ using _Draco_ to make poor Harry jealous? I thought it was the other way around!”

Tom coughs. “It was, ah. It was a mutual using of each other. I just think it worked out a lot better for Draco than me.”

“You and Harry, huh?” Michael leans back, grinning. “Yeah, you know what, I see it. You’ve both got that same creepy vibe.”

Daphne blinks. “Creepy? _Harry_?”

“You didn’t have to share a room with the kid. He’s good with people, charismatic or whatever, but there’s something _off_ about him.”

“Anyway, Tom, you wanted advice.” Pansy pats the bed next to her again, smiling expectantly. “Ask away.”

Reluctantly, he sits back down. “If… if one wanted to date someone _seriously_ , is the proper procedure to go through the parents? I know that’s what Henry did, for Draco, but I remember courting rituals like that being archaic even back in the forties.”

“Oh, that whole charade was for the sake of Draco’s family,” Daphne says. “Anti-Muggle sentiment and blood prejudice are at an all-time low right now, but the Malfoys are still very traditional, and the Potters… aren’t. Um. No offence.”

“Basically, Henry’s being over-the-top because he’s trying to seem respectable.” Michael says. “So if… if ‘one wanted to date someone’, y’know, _theoretically_ , one would just. Like. Talk to the object of their affections and have a nice date. No need for theatrics.” He smiles. “ _Especially_ if we’re talking about Harry. I don’t think he’d take kindly to any of that – I mean, who would you owl for permission, anyway?”

“Talk to him and have a nice date?” Tom feels his face twist. “I – _how_?”

They all go back to staring at him.

“Tom,” Pansy says. “You’re probably the most suave person any of us know.”

The others nod.

“If anyone can seduce our dear Mister Partridge, it’s you,” Lyra says.

Tom splutters, which he realizes is probably her intended response.

Daphne fixes Lyra with a stern look. “Just talk to him, Tom. He’s not about to turn you down.”

“Right,” Tom says, standing hurriedly. “Uh. Thanks. I think.”

“He’s smitten,” Tom hears Daphne say as he slips back into the hall.

Pansy’s high laugh chases him back into the little shared common room, where he collapses into his customary armchair.

“Hey, Tom,” Susan says, looking up from where she’s braiding Peryle’s tail. “Are you okay? You look a bit pale.”

“I’m fine… just had a bit of a harrowing conversation, is all.”

“Pansy?”

“And Lyra.”

Peryle laughs at him.

“I don’t suppose either of you is up for a duel,” he asks, feeling testy.

Neither of them is up for a duel. Cowards.

***

They spend a lot of time wandering the labyrinthine paths of the Forest those next few months, as Hogwarts teeters on the edge of winter. Sometimes it’s just Tom and Harry racing each other through the trees in their newborn animal forms. Other times, Luna tags along, and at least one of them will stay human.

There is no sign of the unicorns or Peryle’s family. Tom fears the worst.

The oaks’ grove still bears the ravages of the Mother’s soul-drought. The plants on the hilltop have gone black and strange; they still grow, but twistedly, stalks pointing away from the sun. Pus-like fungi spring up in the festering gouges where the oaks had once stood.

Building the cairns is Luna’s idea. “We can’t just leave their skeletons out like this,” she reasons, standing in the hollow rib cage of the manticore and poking at the dry remains of its liver with a stick.

Tom looks out over the field of withered bones and decides she’s right. He had lost so much that day: Filobrix, Agatha, countless other inhabitants of the woods – hell, almost his own life. Though he had almost been inclined to leave the clearing as a twisted memorial to the battle, it doesn’t feel right to leave these bones in the sun, in this broken place where even the scavengers are too afraid to venture.

Harry had wanted to do a whole ceremony: burials, named grave markers, maybe a speech from Peryle over the remains of her grandfather, but in the end the ceremony is nothing grand. Though they do end up inviting Peryle, it becomes quickly apparent that even between the four of them they can’t identify most of the bones. A mass grave, then, for the bodies of the centaurs. They stack stones on top, silent.

The hags, half of them dead in their toad bodies and the other half humanoid, go in a second, smaller grave. Tom stands next to this one for a long time, gripping his rosary so tightly that it cuts him. He almost throws it into the grave, but something stops him. Something always seems to stop him when he tries to get rid of it.

“Do you want to say a few words?” Harry asks, hesitating, wand poised to begin pouring soil over the mismatched set of corpses.

 _She was the closest thing I had to a mother_ , Tom thinks. Deep in the pit, a diamond ring catches the sunlight. _I didn’t visit her nearly enough, before the end_. He just shakes his head, thankful for the dryness of his eyes.

The twisted sapling had burnt away all clothing and hair, and they can’t pick the remains of the werewolves out from the dead Aurors. They all go in the same hole, too. Luna sings over this one, tunelessly. Something about it makes Harry cry. Tom wants to comfort him somehow, but he’s not sure how; Peryle steps in, with an arm around Harry’s shoulder, and that seems to help.

Harry starts over to the manticore’s bones next, carving a deep trench into the ground.

“No,” Luna says. “I want that to stay under the sky.”

All that’s left, after that, is what’s left of the Mother at the crest of the hill. They gather around her bones, united in contemplation.

“I'm surprised she even left a corpse behind,” Harry says.

“She always seemed so immaterial,” Tom agrees quietly. “It seems wrong to give her to the earth…”

“It sees wrong to leave her out, too.”

“We should bury her,” Peryle says. “Perhaps… perhaps her bones might nourish some worm.”

The Mother’s bones are empty of marrow, all ash and a memory of cohesion. They all know there is no nourishment to be had there. Still, Peryle is right that the Mother would have wanted for her remains to be given to the woods.

Harry does his best to till over the soil of the site, filling in the gouges in the land and drowning the sick black grass. Luna kneels and lets dirt fall through her hands, looking thoughtful.

On their way back to the castle, a sifting powder of snow starts up. It settles in Luna’s bright hair, on Peryle’s flanks, in Harry’s dark eyebrows. It’s peaceful, in its own way. Tom just feels nauseous.

The hearth in the Slytherin common room is a steady comfort, warming the sympathetic ice in Tom’s bones as he thinks of those corpses making their homes in the frozen earth.

Harry’s drowsing against Peryle’s side and Tom is fiddling with his own hair – the moisture wreaks havoc with it – when Susan and Pansy join them.

“Haven’t you told him yet?” Pansy asks softly, nodding towards Harry’s messy head.

Tom closes his eyes, letting the heat of the fireplace soak into his hollow flesh. Agatha’s skull, all eye holes and wide frog’s mouth, hovers in the back of his mind.

“You haven’t.”

“I’ve had other things on my mind,” Tom tells her, injecting the chill of the Black Lake into his tone.

Pansy scoffs. He hears her shifting closer.

“The fact that your and Michael’s relationship didn’t work out doesn’t give you the right to meddle in the affairs of others,” he says.

There’s a noise of great affront, then Pansy’s clicking footsteps as she storms away.

Tom blinks his eyes open lazily and finds Susan looking up at him.

“That wasn’t kind of you,” she says quietly. “She would have backed off if you just asked nicely.”

“I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

Harry has curled up properly, pillowed on Peryle. The centaur herself closes her eyes, clearly exhausted by the funeral proceedings. Tom’s fingers twitch to fold Harry’s glasses into his lap, lest they fall off his drooping head and shatter on the stone floor. He stays in his chair, fisting his hands on the arms.

Susan follows his gaze, but her eyes seem to catch on Peryle, black hair glossy in the firelight. “We’re sixth-years now, Tom. We have less than two years left at Hogwarts. That’s not long at all, in the grand scheme of things.”

And Tom might have even less time. He tries not to think of the threats arrayed against him: the great metal jaws of the Ministry, the white fire of Dumbledore’s power, the agony of seeing Harry return ragged and worn from the Department of Mysteries. His life feels like a candle with its wick burning away at a dizzying pace.

“Look, I personally couldn’t care less about your romantic endeavors. I do care about _you_ , though, Tom. I don’t know. Seize the day, or whatever.” She’s looking at Peryle again, freckled cheeks gone tight with adoration.

“Thank you,” Tom says, reluctant. “I – I will take that under consideration.”

“You’re a strange one, Riddle,” she says. “I mean, truly. You’re a _Slytherin_. Possibly the most Slytherin person I know. If you want something, just _take it_.”

“Easier said than done.”

“I know. Believe me, I know… He loves you though, Tom. I truly think he does. That’s – you understand that, right? That’s not the thing that’s stopping you?”

Tom thinks of Harry’s Patronus, with its vicious horn and thundering hooves. “I know how he feels about me,” he says, staring into the fire. The tears that hadn’t come in the ruins of the oak grove burn the backs of his eyes.

“That’s good,” Susan says hesitantly. She still doesn’t understand. Tom prays she doesn’t recall Longbottom, trussed up on the classroom floor. _Who do you_ think _orphaned him_?

She leaves him alone after that. He wanders back to his and Harry’s room, locks the door securely, and falls asleep as the unicorn, hanging half out of his bed and not particularly caring.

***

Hufflepuff’s new Seeker, a slender girl with mud-scuffed boots, can’t hold a candle to Cedric. Harry sees the snitch twice, darting near the Slytherin goalposts and over Hooch’s shoulder, before he finally dives for it. Still, the match is over far too quickly.

He holds the tiny golden ball above his head, joyless in the victory shout that rings the stadium. In a moment, his teammates descend upon him, thumping his back and looping madly in the air, and he can’t help but smile. Not a challenging match, perhaps; he can find little glory in defeating such an unimpressive opponent. But he plays for his friends, not for himself – and the other Slytherins are _thrilled_.

When had it started to feel natural to dress himself in silver and green? He still half thinks of himself as a Gryffindor, but their high tower now seems like a daydream, the whimsy of a time before bloodied fingernails and the feel of a crooked smile on his own lips. A time before Tom. He can hardly imagine that, now.

Harry’s skull feels light in the absence of the ram’s horns. In the airy darkness of the common room, he accepts a bottle of firewhiskey from Eliza and lets it ignite his sluggish blood.

Someone’s pulled out a wizarding radio to play warbling Celestina Warbeck songs. Harry chats with dozens of near-strangers, flashes his teeth, accepts compliments, lets people dance with him. There’s a rhythm to this kind of socialization that he’s well-suited for: no exchanged favors or veiled words, just a lazy circuit around the room and a familiar affable mask.

Hours pass. One of his now-fourth years turns his hair pink. The banner Luna had painted for the match – no words on it, just a great serpent coiled in on itself – hangs on the wall. Tom disappears sometime around nine, and Harry doesn’t think too hard about how much he notices the absence. It’s… fun. Yes. This is what _fun_ is.

He’s exhausted, still, by the time Terrance Higgs breaks out the ‘hard stuff’ and the ‘real party gets started’. There is rather a lot of shouting at that point, and Harry can’t remember quite how much drink he’s had.

“You okay, there, Harry?” Daphne asks him at some point, a hand on the small of his back.

“I’m fine,” he says, but he can tell it’s a lie.

“Who keeps giving you punch? Oh, I’m going to kill Eliza… is that Tom? Tom! Oh, dear, sorry Vaisey, thought you were Riddle… you haven’t seen Tom, have you? Oh, Merlin. Harry, it’s time for bed. Come on.”

Harry sways.

Daphne – and _Michael_ , _where had_ he _come from?_ – escort him back to their dorm common and dump him in his chair. Theo’s there, and Lyra, murmuring together over an open textbook.

“Oh dear,” Lyra says.

“My father is a deer,” Harry confides. “But my mother’s a fox… fancy that. Hey, did you know some bats are called flying foxes?’

“No one cares,” Daphne says. He blinks and sees she’s standing over him, frowning.

Theo, who seems suddenly very far away, barks out a laugh. “No, go on, Partridge. I love hearing animal facts from drunk people.”

“Was that sarcasm?” Harry asks. “I sometimes have trouble telling. With you people. You… you slithers. Y’know, I met a snake once who ate licorice? In’that weird? It thought that was a completely normal hobby.”

There’s some sort of a kerfuffle. “Oh, Tom, thank _Merlin_ ,” says Michael. “Harry’s gone completely off the rails. Maybe you can set him right.”

Then his vision is filled with Tom’s face, all high cheekbones and nicely curled hair and eyes warm with concern.

“Hey, Tom.”

“Hey, Harry,” Tom says slowly. “How much alcohol did you have? Are you just a lightweight?”

“Hmmmrr,” is all Harry can think to say to express his uncertainty.

Tom has nice eyelashes. Harry wonders if anyone has ever told him this. “Harry?”

“Mmm. Hello.”

“Get up, Harry, we’re going to get you to bed. You need to sleep this off.”

He lets Tom drag him back to his feet, then pull him back to their room.

“You can get off me now.”

“Whuh?”

“You are free to disentangle,” Tom says, laughter in his voice.

Harry realizes belatedly that he’s got his arm around Tom’s waist, holding their right hands together, and he’s rather mushed his face up against Tom’s shoulder. “Sorry,” he says, freeing himself and immediately collapsing.

“Wrong bed.”

“F’koff.”

“Pardon?”

“Fuck… fuck.”

“That’s nice.”

“Why han’t I ‘ver noticed ‘ow ‘orrible you’re?”

“I think we’d be best off resuming this conversation in the morning, Harry. You are completely incoherent.”

“Y’r… face? Y’r face’s inco – incohay –”

“Dear Lord. Were you this bad a couple minutes ago? I know a thousand spells, you’d think I would have some clue how to sober someone up…”

The door opens, letting in the noise of the party outside.

“Greengrass,” Tom bellows.

“’M gonna sleep,” Harry tells him.

“You do that,” Tom says.

Harry feels the whisper of a touch at his forehead, a tap on one of his knuckles.

Daphne’s accent reminds him of a coin: round if you look at it from one angle, sharp from another. He imagines her voice rolling its way down a hill, catching the light in flashes of pewter and gold.

***

“Are you awake yet?” Tom’s voice is nothing like the polish of Daphne’s coin. It’s more – gah. Words escape Harry.

“D’you want the answer from before or after you asked that?”

Tom chuckles. “You’re lucky Pansy had a stock of hangover cure potion. I traded her some of your arcade tokens for a vial. It’s on your bedside table.”

“How many tokens?”

“Ten.”

“She overcharged you – me? Whatever. Honestly, Tom, for someone who’s always pretending to be so savvy, you have no common sense for the pixeconomy.”

“Harry Potter, lecturing me on common sense?” Tom says as Harry knocks back the potion. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Huh.”

“The others told me you were quite the interesting drunk, if that makes things any better,” Tom comes into focus as Harry locates his glasses. He’s already dressed for the weekend, in nice slacks and a blazer. “Of course, by the time I got there, you were a cranky mess. But Lyra tells me you were full of _animal facts_.”

“ _God_.”

“I rather think I was missing out,” Tom says idly. “That said: never do that again.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“And you know why that was bad?”

“Er.”

“Alcohol lowers inhibitions. If I, for example, drank too much –”

“You’d probably end up turning half the House into frogs on accident,” Harry finishes.

“Huh,” Tom says. “That sounds kind of fun, now that you mention it…”

Harry sits up and cracks his knuckles, feeling the last fuzzy remains of the hangover slipping away. He’s in Tom’s bed, he realizes – when had that happened?

“As is, your magic didn’t do much more than give a few people electric shocks and make some pretty lights, but –”

“I don’t remember that.”

Tom snorts. “You weren’t very present.”

“Right. I won’t get that drunk again.”

Tom shrugs. “Just don’t do it around a bunch of purebloods. Control over magic is important to them.”

Harry grunts in acknowledgement, mussing his hair and yawning.

“Harry,” Tom says, suddenly serious. “I was wondering whether you might –”

There’s a knock at the door. Calcifer sticks his head in. “Tom? Hey, I was looking for a second opinion on some Ancient Runes work I’ve been doing. Would you mind?”

“By all means,” Tom says agreeably, though he kind of slams the door on his way out.

In his apparent frustration, one of the pillows grows stubby little legs and a wide, toothy mouth. It makes to chase after Tom, but Harry hauls it back. _Control over magic_. Tom has no ground to stand on there. Bemused, Harry keeps the conjuration occupied tearing conjured birds to pieces, and an hour goes by until it fades back into lifelessness.

***

It’s early December before James reminds them off-handedly that they should be studying for their exam along with working on their other assignments for his course.

“Shit,” Harry says as they shuffle out into the hallway. “I completely forgot he was going to _cut_ some of us.”

Henry tries to sling an arm around Harry’s shoulders, but subsides after a moment. “You’ll be safe, Harry. You’re easily the top of the class.” He shoves his hands awkwardly in his pockets.

“I haven’t studied at all,” Harry says dismally.

But Harry is not the only of the Slytherins to have neglected their Defense studies. Susan organizes a study group for them all, though Harry ends up more or less in charge. They try to invite Tom along, but he says something pompous and retreats into an advanced Dark Studies text.

He’s become more like the unicorn lately, Harry thinks fondly. Snooty and elegant and sharp-edged.

So then the study group is just Harry, Susan, Peryle, Daphne, and Lyra, because Calcifer seemed to have caught some of Tom’s snootiness.

They meet in a dusty old classroom they find on the fifth floor, near a portrait of a man with an extravagant headpiece and a pet seahorse in a tank behind him.

Harry cleans the grime off a chalkboard and frowns. “Okay, what have we covered so far?” _Nonverbal spells_ , he writes. _Practical dueling_.

“Proper application of anti-Apparition wards,” Lyra says.

“We had that one lecture on when you should use a shield and when you should focus on evasion instead.” Susan scratches her head. “But other than that… I mean, Potter has a really hands-on teaching style. We mostly do practice, not theory.”

“So, it’ll probably be a practical exam.” Harry circles _practical dueling_. “Great. There’s five of us… we can do a sort of tournament with that, can’t we?”

And with that, the little study group morphs into an excuse to hex each other.

They learn all the spells they can get their hands on – variations on _Protego_ , dozens of obscure jinxes, useful transfigurations. Harry commits still more to memory that he would never dream of casting in a duel: spells to freeze an opponent’s blood into blades of ice, or inflict blindness. Tom even teaches him the Heart-Stopper, the same curse that Longbottom had almost killed him with.

The Dark combat spells come easily to Harry. He’s not sure how to feel about that fact.

One evening, they file back into the common room with most of them bearing great elephant trunks – Harry blames Peryle, who had found the spell in the first place, but it had been Daphne who used it to such great effect.

“Tom,” he trumpets, seeing him sitting among the seventh years by the fire. Tom and the older kids look up, shocked at the noise, then collapse into laughter.

Tom sits them all down and returns their noses to normal. “You started firing this around _before_ you found the counterjinx?”

Lyra, who alone remains un-elaphantine, giggles.

Before they know it, December is upon them. Elephant-related mishaps or not, the five of them file quite confidently into the Defense classroom on the day of the exam –

Into darkness.

Harry lowers himself, crouching closer to the ground, eyes scanning for a sign of spellfire. There’s nothing. Not even, he realizes, a sound from his friends.

“Lyra?” he asks. “Peryle?”

Silence, but for the muted echo of his own voice. He’s in a confined space, then.

“ _Lumos_.”

A piece of paper lies on the ground before him.

‘ _Welcome to the Defense exam, N.E.W.T. students! You have been split into pairs. This is an experimental testing strategy, but I think it’ll be fun. Remember, I’ll be watching!_

' _The nature of the test should become clear in a few moments_.

‘ _With love, Professor Potter_ ’

Harry laughs, feeling a bright burn of combat-excitement leap to life in his sternum. Pairs, huh? He can work with that. “Hullo? Is someone else here?”

Lights flick on above his head. He’s in a featureless room; he recognizes, now, the musty cat-piss scent of a pocket dimension.

Ten paces by ten paces large. Not much space, but workable. Across from him stands a doorway.

“Hello?” says a very familiar voice from behind the door.

“Henry, is that you?” Harry walks closer to the door, reaching out to touch its wood.

Before he can, it vaporizes, taking the wall with it: and there Henry stands, in a space that mirrors Harry’s own blank pocket dimension.

“Oh, this’ll be _fun_ ,” Henry says brightly. “What do you reckon the test is?”

“I’m not sure,” Harry answers, scanning their surroundings. “Assume standard pair fighting formation, and draw your wand.”

Henry nods solemnly, tongue peeking through his lips in concentration as he turns his back to Harry’s. _So young_ , Harry finds himself thinking. _He wouldn’t have stood a chance back in my timeline_.

But Henry _would_ have stood a chance. In Harry’s timeline, Henry would _be_ Harry, because they’re the same person. Harry pinches the bridge of his nose. He shouldn’t be thinking all these paradoxical thoughts, not when they’re supposed to be taking a test.

“Oh!” Henry bursts out, jumping. “Harry! Harry, look!”

Harry turns his head to look, keeping part of his attention still facing forward. There, in front of Henry – the wall unzips like the opening of a tent flap. Something emerges.

“Practice dummy!” Henry reports excitedly.

The wooden construct turns hollow eyes on the two of them, pointing its wand in Henry’s direction and bowing. James had brought simulacrums like it into class before; apparently they’re used for practice in the Auror Department, and James’ old coworkers had given him permission to use a couple.

“Right,” says Henry. “No big deal, right? It’ll know _Expelliarmus_ , _Confringo_ , _Protego_ , and… probably nothing else…?”

The dummy strides forward, its ‘wand’ throwing out flames. So much for that little theory.

Henry squeaks, leaping back and out of formation.

Stepping around him, Harry puts out the fire with a billowing jet of water. He grins despite himself: Tom is going to _hate_ dealing with this test.

The mannequin continues moving, wand whipping in harsh, robotic swishes.

Harry dodges a _Confringo_ blast, trying to think. _Expelliarmus_ only works on beings that actually _own_ their wands; the simulacrum will have some approximation of a Dark mind, but not enough to possess magic of its own – and certainly not enough to assert ownership over a wand. Harry will have to be a bit more inventive.

He whips his wand around, summoning a stronger stream of water and pummeling the dummy. It constructs a shield, but not before being knocked back a few steps. Harry throws a _Stupefy_ , just enough power behind it to weaken the shield, then tries to transfigure the water coating it to gasoline. His following _Incendio_ is enough to break the shield, but the transfiguration doesn’t appear to have stuck.

“Woah,” Henry says, stumbling backwards.

Another blasting curse flies toward Harry, and he shields to ward off the debris.

He sends a freezing charm at the ground. In the same moment, the wall peels open again, yielding yet another wooden construct. It slips on the ice.

“Back in formation,” Harry snaps, the blitzing joy of battle sparking to life in him. _Now_ they have a fight.

Henry scrambles to obey. The initial attack had him flustered, but he seems to have regained his wits. Good.

“Shield me,” Harry orders.

“Okay,” Henry says. “What’s the pla –”

“ _Force be with you_ ,” Harry says, summoning a violet beam of light and twirling his wand. James is watching, huh? Time to show off.

The second construct regains its balance, turning its wand on Henry.

“Ready?”

Henry grins, and for a moment it’s like looking in a mirror. “Ready.”

Harry leaps forward, lightsaber aloft, dodging a _Confringo_. His summoned blade slams against the first construct’s hastily constructed shield, shattering it.

“On your left,” Henry calls.

Another line of flames shoots out at Harry from the second practice dummy. He throws himself to the ground, losing his chance to strike at the first construct. Cursing under his breath, he shoots back to his feet – but the first construct has fallen like a puppet with its strings cut, its wooden exterior flaking away to ash.

“Incineration charm,” Henry says smugly, dousing a fire creeping across the ground towards Harry. “Mom taught it to me – normally it’s for getting firewood to ignite.”

“Well done,” says Harry, genuinely impressed. “Oh! There’s a third one on your right –”

The warning comes too late – the third construct, pulling itself out of the wall, lands a _Confringo_ blast at Henry’s feet. A moment later Henry disappears, and the marsh hawk takes to the air in his place, screeching in alarm.

“You okay?” Harry asks – he thought he’d seen a spray of crimson blood in instant before the hawk’s flight.

Henry-the-bird does not respond. It circles the tiny battlefield, flapping desperately, and dives for the first construct with razor-sharp claws outstretched.

Best to finish this fight quickly, then. Harry isn’t optimistic about the odds a bird has against a magical simulacrum.

He turns on the newest construct, avoiding _Expelliarmus_ es and trying to get into melee range.

This one isn’t fast enough to erect a shield before he can punch his blade through its torso, cutting it neatly in half.

“Ha!” he says, turning to check on Henry. The hawk, wings spread wide, has attached itself to the first construct’s head. Neither of them seem to know what to do next.

“ _Screeeeee_!” says Henry.

Harry bites back a laugh. Maybe the two of them really are the same: Harry is reminded of his own recklessness, a first year straddling a troll’s thick neck. “Need some help there, Henry?”

He dismisses his lightsaber with a smile in favor of casting an _Incendio_ of his own. The hawk, screeching, takes to the sky just before the final construct goes alight.

Henry falls back to the ground, stumbling and beaming. “That was _wicked_ ,” he breathes. “Seriously, Harry. You never fail to impress me with stuff like this.”

He’s interrupted by a popping noise as a ladder materializes on the far wall.

“Looks like we did it!” Henry enthuses.

“So we did,” Harry says. “Y’know, Henry, this was… fun. I’m glad we were partnered.”

“Me, too.” Henry pauses at the base of the ladder, tilting his head. “Harry, I’m so happy that our parents took you in all that time ago. You’re like a brother to me.”

Harry spends a long moment frozen, feeling something warm expand in his chest. He hasn’t felt _worthy_ in months. But maybe, if a boy as kind as Henry can see him as a brother – maybe he can yet be redeemed.

“Harry?” Henry asks from the top of the ladder. “You coming?”

“Oh! I – yeah. I’m coming.”

He follows Henry up the ladder into the Defense classroom. Daphne, wind-ruffled and irritable, and Neville, a nasty bruise forming on his cheek, are sat on the floor.

“Hey, Harry,” says Neville. Harry feels his welcoming smile like a physical blow.

“Hey.”

“Look at you, not a mark on you,” Daphne sniffs. “I’d call some sort of favoritism, but it looks as though they got Henry pretty good.”

“Oh, fuck,” Harry says, looking Henry over with a more critical eye. That spray of blood he’d glimpsed before hadn’t been a trick of the light; Henry sports a nasty laceration on his left bicep.

“Dad doesn’t do favoritism,” Henry protests. “And it’s just a little scratch, see.” He pinches the skin around the cut. The stream of blood greatly increases. “Ah. Never mind.”

After another minute, Tom climbs out of the hole in the floor, slightly singed but otherwise unharmed. He sits next to Harry on the floor, smelling of smoke and looking more murderous than usual. Blaise Zabini, the snide Hufflepuff, follows close behind. He looks shaken.

“You okay there, Tom?” Henry asks, voice trembling with repressed laughter.

Tom mutters something about ‘fire’ and ‘cheating’, then says, “I turned them all into trees. Take note, Potter. The same thing will happen to you if you cross me.”

Henry laughs for real, then, eyes a sweet green, gentle even in mockery.

***

And then it’s holiday break, and they’re watching through the windows of the Hogwarts Express as frosted countryside melds into the gray of London. All eleven Slytherins have piled together in one compartment, shoulder to shoulder, laughter flowing freely. Luna’s there, too – she had shown up at some point and spent at least a minute lurking in the corridor before Pansy finally noticed and told her to _come in, already_.

At the station, Harry meets Regulus Black, there to collect his nephew, Calcifer and his daughter, Lyra. Justin’s mother, the head of a Muggle research corporation, shakes his and Tom’s hands, saying that she is so _pleased_ to meet her son’s friends.

Finally, Lily emerges from the crowd, looking as tired and jumpy as when she had met them that summer. James had gone home hours ago, using the Floo network rather than the train. He’d given them the option to come with him, but they’d all wanted to ride with their friends.

“Something’s happened again, hasn’t it,” Geoff says as he sees his mother’s face. “Oh, no.”

Dahlia, sticky-fingered, reaches up to take Harry’s hand.

“It’s going to be okay,” Lily says. “Let’s go home, now.”

Harry looks around, seeing that Lily is not the only parent looking careworn. There’s a muted anxiety to the crowd, and over half the families have already departed.

Lily Apparates them all home in a gut-twisting lurch. The cottage looks faded and hunched under the harsh white of the sky.

“Inside, everyone,” she says. “We’ve a guest.”

The five of them exchange anxious glances, hesitating in her wake. Harry swallows, steeling himself with the distant vibrating hum of the last oak’s song. He leads the others after Lily.

Upstairs, James sits in front of the fire, hunched over himself, clasped hands hanging down below his knees.

Next to him sits Dumbledore, managerial and silvered.

The two men look up as Lily and the kids clamber up the stairs. Dumbledore smiles in a way that Harry can no longer see as kindly. “It’s been too long, Potters. Tom.”

“Minister,” Tom says, sounding bored and utterly calm. His hands, locked behind his back, tremble minutely.

Lily collapses on the sofa beside James, who puts an arm around her and holds her close.

Geoff shifts closer to the herd. Tom, tallest among them, straightens his spine. None of them like this. This loaded silence, the gathered coalition of adults, the prickle of anticipated bad news.

James gestures to the coffee table. “Special edition of the _Prophet_. News broke while you were all on the train.”

Henry picks the paper up, holding it so all five of them can read the headline: “MUGGLE ATTACK ON ST. MUNGO’S: FIVE DEAD, 25 MISSING”.

Harry feels like he’s floating, adrift in an arctic sea. Henry drops the paper, and it crumples to the floor with an unsubstantial noise, its fall muffled by the carpet.

“How is that… how is that possible?” says Geoff.

All eyes turn to Dumbledore. The wrinkles around his eyes seem deeply etched, like some ancient woodcarving. The air in the sitting room feels dense and buzzing. Dumbledore’s magic, Harry realizes. He’s so, so strong… how can they fight this?

He was the only wizard Voldemort had ever feared. Harry feels ill, though he’s not sure if it’s because of his own part in all of this or the crushing strength of Dumbledore’s power.

“Muggle governments have always known about the existence of the magical world,” the old man says. “But now they feel empowered to _do_ something about us. There have been whispers throughout their world for all of history, but these past few decades…” he shakes his grizzled head, and his beard slithers in unison. “The invention of the tricity box brought our two peoples too close together. With it, their weapons can function in magical spaces. It was only a matter of time until an attack of this nature. I see that now. But I thought the Muggles harmless… we all did, I think.”

Tom’s expression grows hard. _He’s seen the Muggle war_ , Harry remembers. _He knows better even than I do what Muggles are capable of_.

Harry doesn’t like this, doesn’t like what it’s doing to Tom. He wants to hide the both of them away from this crumbling world that was broken long before the two of them entered it.

“They attacked _Mungo’s_?” Henry asks stonily. “ _Savages_. We – we’ll be striking back, I imagine?”

 _Savages_. Harry sinks his nails into the meat of his palm and tries not to wish for Voldemort and his more blatant evils. Henry sounds like Malfoy. Not the charming boy with the fisher cat form, but the ugly, sneering bigot he had once known.

“I need to return to the Ministry to discuss that with my advisors,” Dumbledore says, pulling his withered frame back to its feet. “Before then, I wanted to speak with Harry and Tom. If you’ll all excuse us?”

Harry shrinks closer to Tom and finds himself pressed fully against him, shoulder to chest. Tom must have moved closer to him, too, for Harry doesn’t remember being that near him.

“I thought we might take a little wander in the garden,” Dumbledore says, leading them back downstairs, smiling emptily over half-moon glasses.

It’s cold outside. The sky is a pristine white, catching on Dumbledore’s beard and illuminating his eyes slightly less than seems natural. _He’s wearing a glamour. His eyes are actually red_ , Harry thinks, grimly fascinated. He’d loved another version of this man. He’d been like a father. Now… well, they are both strangers to each other.

They stroll through the Potter’s rose garden, surrounded by the dormant stems of the flowers. Tom reaches for Harry’s hand, but Harry steps away. Something about the idea of Dumbledore looking over to see them entwined in each other makes him feel shivery and miserable.

“Alice told me that she met the two of you in the Forest,” Dumbledore says, voice cleaving the silence of the yard. “She was always very impressed with the two of you, you know. She said you summoned up a full pack of wolves, Tom? Admirable.”

He turns to find the two of them stopped on the little stone path through the garden.

“I don’t blame you, of course… fighting to save your friends is noble indeed. Not a terribly Slytherin move, of course, but, well. The Sorting Hat is a notorious gossip.” He smiles as though he’s just told some tremendous joke.

Harry wishes, now, that he was holding Tom’s hand.

“There isn’t any more time, now, for childish games in the woods,” Dumbledore says sternly. “I will be frank with you, boys, because I know you are both warriors in your own ways. Our people are on the cusp of war. We will need all of our soldiers, no matter their origins or… destinations.”

Harry swallows. _Destinations_... he’s talking about Tom. About Voldemort. _God_.

“James does not believe you or your classmates had anything to do with what happened to Alice,” Dumbledore says. “ _I_ believe you had everything to do with it. So do my colleagues. But we are willing to forgive.”

“Sir,” Tom says, his voice lower than Harry has ever heard it. “If I may. I don’t understand why you’re not executing me.”

“You’re a child, Tom,” Dumbledore says. “You were one of my students. And I am a great believer in redemption.”

Tom’s face is motionless. “Yes, sir. I won’t disappoint you.”

Harry sucks on the side of his mouth. “Er. Me, too.”

Dumbledore looks at him, his face softening. “I know, Harry, my boy. I hate to ask this of you.”

Harry nods tightly. The ram has come up close under his skin, anxious for blood. It has four horns, each of them great and curving and ready to _hurt_ this foolish old human.

“With that, I really must be off,” Dumbledore says gravely. “Thank you for speaking with me, boys.”

They walk him to the Floo reception room, playing at politeness and holding their best innocent looks firm on their faces.

“What did _he_ want?” Henry asks, popping up as the Minister at last disappears in a column of viridian flame.

Tom turns, a crafty look entering his eyes. “He’s almost certain that the Ministry is going to move forwards with the war proceedings. He wanted to apologize for getting us caught up in the war of another time…”

Henry squeezes his eyes shut in a full-body shudder. “It’s… it’s just Muggles, though, right? We can – we can take them out quickly. I mean, who knows? We could get this over with in the span of the year. Maybe we will have graduated, and things will have wound down, and…”

“Henry, hush. Let’s go read the article in its entirety. There is every chance they won’t have so much as declared war within the year…”

The two of them spend some twenty minutes with the Potters before making their excuses and locking themselves in their room.

“So…” Harry says.

“They’re all so _convinced_ that I was the one to destroy Longbottom’s mind,” Tom says, laughing a little. “I’m not sure whether to be flattered or offended.”

“ _That’s_ your takeaway from all of this?”

“I – no. I don’t want to think about the rest of it, though. Harry, that attack – that was nothing. I’ve seen real war. That was an _experiment_. They wanted to see what we’re capable of.”

“I keep thinking of the Department of Mysteries – ‘keeping subjects for as long as they’ll let you’ – and what Muggles must think of us… Tom, do you think the McKinnons…”

“Test subjects,” Tom says. “God, you don’t think…?”

“That article said there were twenty-five people confirmed missing.”

“Fuck. I suppose that’s – I mean, it’s not like they’d stand a chance in a proper war –”

Harry’s lips thin. “I don’t suppose your history research touched on the atom bomb?”

“ _Fuck_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's like there's a supernatural force that won't let them talk about their feelings until some arbitrarily-determined "right moment"... weird...


	21. Honeysuckle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _took them long enough_

They measure that first day in careful pacing. Tom maps a circuit around the house, face dark, hands folded behind his back. Harry sits in the kitchen with Dahlia, just watching her draw: the same image, a dark-haired boy on the back of a unicorn, blooms again and again on her paper.

Eventually, he goes to join Tom in his pacing. They march in lockstep around the house for barely two laps before an exasperated Lily tells them to ‘go do something productive’.

The fear is exhausting. They try to do Snape’s homework for Dark Studies, but nothing comes of it. Geoff eventually tracks them down and challenges Harry to a lightsaber duel, which Harry agrees to. The whirring blitz of their blades colliding is enough to momentarily drown his anxieties, but it’s not enough. Too soon, the winter night descends in full, and it’s time for bed – Harry can’t remember eating, but Tom says Rooke had made a pasta dish.

The next day, he’s numb. As usual, they awaken hours before the rest of the house.

The kitchen is still and silent in the dawn. Harry leans against Tom, feeling drowsy and distant, and they eat a breakfast of blueberry muffins sat on the cold floor, backs against the oven.

“Come to the woods with me,” Tom says, looking as far away as Harry feels.

Harry agrees, thankful for the distraction.

As soon as they pass beyond view of the cottage, Harry gives himself up to the fleecy freedom of the ram’s limbs, and Tom shifts soon after.

Tom-the-unicorn is so beautiful. The oak-wrought swirl of wood in its heart is magnificent, distinctive. Eyes like the hollow of an owl’s nest, neck like a swan’s, every motion calculated. The unicorn is everything he loves about Tom distilled, wrought in silver-white lines. His perfect self-awareness, his polish, his edge of infuriating aloofness. And the ram – the ram loves the unicorn so freely. The ram wants to race the unicorn over the ocean, teach it the beauty of carelessness, dance with it until all these complex human desires fall away and they can just _be_.

They chase each other through the woods, hooves pattering along to the melody of the dying oak. Harry finds himself in the wildflower clearing by the riverside and watches as the ram runs into the water, plunging its great horns into the current and splashing the unicorn. Prancing, ostentatious, joyful. Flirting, Harry realizes.

The unicorn follows him into the water, delicately, then eagerly. The weak winter sun breaks through the trees, lighting droplets of the stream in rainbow brightness, brightening the rivulets running down the unicorn’s heaving white flanks.

And then Harry is fully himself, awake in the ram’s strong body. Such a strange sight, this. A unicorn, its tail dripping with water, crashing in rippling circles around a farm animal.

The unicorn stills, the dark of its eyes shifting, and Harry knows he’s looking at Tom again.

It’s Harry-and-Tom, then, not the ram and the unicorn, that go charging out of the stream bed, back into the woods. And it’s Harry who shoves Tom, just playfully, in the shoulder. And Tom who shoves him back – then they’re both falling over, in a flailing pile of hooves and horsehair and curling horns.

Human once more, they fall to the forest floor in the midst of the birches, tangled up in each other, right hands clasped together so the scars on their hands spread out from a shared epicenter.

Harry laughs, feeling light enough to fly. He wants to stay here, in the birdsong of the birchwood, until the human world burns away.

Tom lays his head back against the ground. His hair, grown long enough to curl around the line of his jaw, bleeds out from his scalp into the leaf litter around them. He blinks slowly up at Harry, a knowing smile twisting his lips. His eyes, though, seem serious.

“I keep meaning to ask you,” Tom says, and Harry is so close to him that he can feel the vibrations of the words through both of their chests. “If you might want to accompany me to Hogsmeade some weekend.”

“We always go to Hogsmeade together,” Harry says. “Except for the time you went with Malfoy.”

Tom frowns, wetting his lips. “No, Harry, I mean –”

Harry bites his lip, studying the line of Tom’s jaw, the honey-gold of his eyes in the sun.

“Oh my – _Harry_. You’re _playing_ with me, you know exactly what I mean –”

Harry can’t help but giggle, burying his face in Tom’s bony chest.

“Harry – look at me! This is serious!”

Harry blinks down at him, mirth dying.

Tom reaches his hand up to cup his face, biting his lip, looking lovely and uncertain and wholly unlike himself.

And, finally, after a year of quiet longing, Harry can’t help himself any longer. He leans down and kisses Tom, letting go of his hand so he can hold his face in turn.

Tom kisses him back, but Harry can feel his mouth curling into a smirk. They break apart after a bare moment, Tom shoving Harry away so he can laugh, breathless and high.

Harry sits back, put out. “Tom –”

“It’s just,” Tom says, wheezing. “I – Harry, you are my favorite person. You know that, right? You are – I never would have thought this would be how –”

Harry’s throat tightens. He had been so _sure_ that Tom shared his yearning – but perhaps Harry just isn’t Tom’s type. No, Tom likes men like Orion Black and Draco Malfoy, men with sky-colored eyes and wide pureblood foreheads and _pedigree_.

But then Tom’s sitting up, kissing him slow and sweet, his thumb at the hinge of Harry’s jaw, his bony fingers at his neck, touching the brand at his nape. After a minute of this, he breaks away to pull the cord of Harry’s pendant off his neck.

“Wanted to see your real face,” he explains, staring at Harry with some expression he doesn’t quite recognize.

They’re both sitting. Harry’s never kissed anyone before, but he thinks he likes it. He adjusts so he’s sitting almost in Tom’s lap. Yes, he decides, as Tom tilts his head and a bit of teeth get involved. He _does_ rather like this.

In the same moment as he’s decided this, Tom pushes him onto his back, surprisingly strong, and Harry freezes momentarily, not quite sure what this means. He lets Tom pin his arms above his head, looking down at him with an expression as wild as the unicorn’s. The sunlight doesn’t reach his eyes from this angle; they’re dark as the night sky, and twice as infinite.

“There are entire worlds in you that I’ll never see, aren’t there?” Harry says, not sure why he’s even talking. He’s decided that he in fact _does_ like kissing, and he’s rather anxious to get back to it.

Tom closes his fathomless eyes. “And you hold secrets that I will never know.”

Harry stretches up and kisses him again, just a little peck on the lips, and then they’re properly kissing, Tom solid and warm above him. Harry sits back for a while, exploring the new sensations – the _tongue_.

Then, once he thinks he’s learned enough, he rolls them over and does the exact same to Tom, until he’s gasping and red-lipped, hair utterly awry. “You’re very good at that,” Tom says, and Harry kisses the mole on his neck and tastes the salt of Tom’s sweat on his own lips.

They stay in the birch wood until dusk, wandering as animals and people both, experimenting with this _kissing_. Harry takes Tom’s shirt off and spends long minutes tracing the growth of bark on his chest, the rough edges of it, the strange texture of where it joins with human flesh. It’s shaped a bit like a spiral, a swirling healed wound on the side of a tree. Tom watches his investigations through half-closed eyes, a smile dancing on his lips whenever Harry glances up at his face.

They return to the yard and just sit outside for a while, watching the lights in the house flicker on one by one.

Tom puts Harry’s pendant back on and kisses him on his scarred forehead.

Harry squirms, grinning, feeling as light as when Tom had hollowed out his bones. “What?”

“I like both of your faces.”

_I only like one of yours_ , Harry thinks. He says, “I hate having to hide.”

Tom frowns and tugs on Harry’s bangs.

“We need to talk this all through.”

“This?” Tom asks, gesturing between them.

“I dunno. Ah… how does ‘boyfriends’ sound?”

Tom hums approvingly. “I quite like the sound of that.”

“There’s that sorted.” Harry clears his throat, giddy. “I actually meant… I meant everything _else_ , though.”

“Dumbledore. The attack on St. Mungo’s.”

“Yeah.”

“Honestly?” Tom picks up a blade of grass and begins mechanically shredding it. “Not much has changed. I mean, we have more information now. We know what the Ministry is doing. But our strategy – lying through our teeth while we gather allies – that hasn’t changed.”

Harry lies back in the grass, staring up at the clouded blackness of the sky. “But to what end, anymore? This whole thing – it’s not what we thought. The Ministry aren’t the aggressors. And the Muggles… they could destroy us all.”

“The Ministry killed the oaks, Harry. We can’t just…”

“Look, Tom. I’ve done some crazy shit in my life. I mean, you have no idea, some of the stunts I pulled before we met… but Longbottom was right. We’re out of our depth.”

“So, you’re proposing – what? That we become the nice, obedient children Dumbledore wants us to be?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never felt so helpless before.”

Tom’s throat, yellow in the lights of the cottage, bobs.

“I wish we could just leave. Find somewhere safe and hide away,” Harry says.

“No, you don’t.”

“Fine… I _wish_ I could want that.”

“We’ll be okay.”

Harry laughs humorlessly. “What does that even _mean_?”

“I don’t know… we’ll be _together_ , though.” Tom’s looking at him again, face softened by the twilight. He holds out a hand to help Harry to his feet, and they return to the cottage’s artificial lighting, its cold windows and gentle magic.

James and Lily sit at the kitchen table, talking softly together as Rooke busies herself with dinner preparations. Lily barely glances up as they enter, so engrossed is she in a sheaf of papers printed with tiny text and neat data tables.

James, though, does a double take. “ _Hello_ , boys.” He elbows his wife.

“Hi?” Lily blinks foggily up at them. Her hair has mostly fallen out of the bun on her head, and there’s a smear of ink on her freckled cheek. “Oh. _Hi_.”

“Well, at least someone’s finding some joy these days,” James says. “Here, boys, repeat after me: _Ad ordinum_. Here, I’ll perform it on the both of you.”

Harry watches as Tom’s hair un-musses itself, the high color fading from his lips and cheeks and that spot on his neck that Harry’d fixated on.

“Makes certain extracurricular activities a bit less obvious,” James explains, laughing. “I had to teach it to Henry, too. Merlin, Harry, you look mortified! That’s okay, kiddo… you’re in your sixth year, y’know. Things happen. Why, I remember when I was your age, I…”

Harry and Tom flee before he can launch into the story.

“Bloody hell,” Harry pants, slamming their bedroom door closed. He’s embarrassed, suddenly, to even look at Tom.

Tom falls onto his bed, all long, sprawling limbs, soft eyelashes, shadows in his cheeks – and now Harry can’t help but stare, finding his eyes drawn to the expressive curve of Tom’s lips.

He’s blushing again, for a completely different reason. Tom sees it and laughs at him, but he’s flushed too, just slightly, in his ears and the back of his neck.

***

Though the world is still falling apart around them, it doesn’t feel quite so crushing anymore. Harry’s reminded of the honeysuckle bushes that had grown next to the park by the Dursley’s: fleeting moments of sweetness stolen from the heart of a thin, summer-yellow flower. This feels more lasting, though, drops of nectar lingering on his tongue and burning a path down his throat. Snow falls outside, but Harry feels as though there’s a coal within him, burning brighter every time he sees Tom, every time he touches him or makes him laugh.

The two of them have been almost-dating for months now, he realizes, but there’s a simple euphoria to the realization of that fact. It’s worth all of James’s teasing and Henry’s knowing glances.

That Christmas Eve, James takes them on an excursion to Diagon. “Good way to get our minds off of all of this, don’t you think?” he asks, interrupting a five-way game of Exploding Snap that Henry has been happily dominating.

Everyone but Lily decides to come, unsurprisingly – Lily’s been spending a lot of time at the Ministry, holidays or no. During the little time she spends at home her mind is a thousand miles away, dwelling on her work, face gray under the specter of the brewing conflict.

Harry’s never been to Diagon in the winter, but he’s charmed by the snow drifts blown up into doorways, the colorful scarves of passerby, the wreathes perched in improbable locations. In shop windows he glimpses holiday displays: tiny pine trees garnished by sugared fireflies decorating the window of a sweets store, enchanted nutcrackers executing dance choreography with apparent reluctance, an enchanted ice sculpture shaped like a fox with antlers.

“I’ll buy you kids anything you want,” James says, rubbing his gloved hands together.

Geoff and Henry straighten up, excited breaths gusting off them.

“Within reason,” James amends. “No racing brooms.”

“I’ve been meaning to get a haircut,” Tom says. “If that’s all right.”

“Of course.”

“I like your hair,” Harry whispers as James escorts them to his ‘absolute favorite’ barber whose shop is ‘right around here, I’m sure…’

“Unfortunately, I don’t much care much for your opinion on the matter,” Tom says. “Not given that rat’s nest _you_ call a hairstyle.”

Harry sniffs in mock-outrage, bumping his shoulder into Tom’s arm.

“Careful there, sheep-boy.”

“Oh, you are just _asking_ for a hex to the face –”

In front of them, James rounds a corner and pauses. “Ah, here it is! See, I’m capable of basic navigation. In we go. Hello, Tonso! Yes, I’ve just brought Tom here in for a quick trim…”

The barber is a broad man with an impressive mustache. He’s wearing a Muggle tie with little snowmen printed on it.

“I could use a cut, too,” Henry says.

“As could Harry,” says Tom.

Harry stiffens. “No, I _don’t_.”

“Told you,” Tom mutters. “You aren’t entitled to an opinion on hair if you can’t be bothered to take care of your own.”

“I’ll just grow it back,” Harry hisses under his breath.

“Exactly. What’s the harm in getting it cut? Who knows, maybe you’ll like it.”

“Right,” the barber says brightly, apparently oblivious to the tension. “You three can all sit right over here.”

Harry hesitates, but he feels childish now, and Tom’s smirking in a way that says _he’s_ decided he’s won, which Harry can’t quite dispute. _I’ll just grow it back_ , he promises himself. _This isn’t permanent. Just an experiment_.

The barber asks what kind of a cut he would like and, overwhelmed, Harry says he’ll have whatever Henry is having. He raises a plucked eyebrow and says something about different face shapes, but Harry shrugs him off.

A storm of scissors and squirt bottles descends on him in the next moment. Harry holds himself perfectly in place, hardly daring to breathe as the blades snip dangerously close to his skull. His toes curl in his boots as loops of shorn hair fall to the ground around him.

James claps. “Great! Where next, kids? Here, Tonso, how much do I owe you?”

Harry blinks. Is it over so quickly? Dudley’s haircuts had always seemed to take ages. Tentatively, he prods at his scalp, finding the hair there worryingly short. What kind of cut, exactly, had Henry asked for?

Then he notices the way Tom’s looking at him, and that’s all Harry can properly focus on, the _looking_ , the little birdlike quirk of Tom’s head and his tiny, open-mouthed smile. Tom, of course, looks very nice with short hair. The barber has styled it very flatteringly, so there are longer bits at the top to retain Tom’s natural curl. Harry wants to touch it.

“I never properly realized just how prominent that scar on your forehead is,” Tom says as they venture back out onto the chilly street. “I mean, the ram has one in the same place, but it’s more dramatic, somehow, on a person.”

Harry reaches up to his scar – it’s faded slightly since the surgery the Unspeakables had done on him, but it’s still there, white and knobbly, splitting his forehead from hairline to eyebrow. That’s not important right now, though – _his bangs are completely gone_. “I don’t care for this hairstyle much at all,” Harry decides, feeling naked with his scar out in the open. He eyes fellow shoppers with suspicion. Any one of them could easily recognize him, and then the Potters’ shopping trip will be ruined – they will be mobbed by people with cameras, and toothy grins, and hands they want shaken –

“Nonsense,” Tom says. “I think it quite suits you.”

And it _is_ nonsense, all of it. The scar is just a scar now; he’s just another schoolboy. Just Harry Partridge, gray-eyed, Slytherin, unremarkable save his particular talent for offensive magic.

And his boyfriend likes his haircut. Harry licks his lips and tastes summer-sweetness, reaches down and finds Tom’s hand there waiting to take his.

James buys Dahlia sugared strawberries and Henry a custom Ravenclaw-bronze snitch. Geoff asks for ice cream, and they end up each getting a cone, walking through the winter air, cold both in and out.

Harry thinks about casting a warming charm, but decides to keep the chill, drape it around himself until he feels he can be numb to all but the sugar.

The back of his neck feels bare and strange without hair there. He imagines, that passerby might instead be staring at the brand etched into the skin there, wonders if the scarlet rune has healed at all in the time since he’s received it.

He’s glad when they reach the Leaky Cauldron and Floo home. The last bites of his ice cream get coated in ash, but he doesn’t much mind.

“Are you _eating_ that?” Tom watches him, nose screwed up in overblown disgust. “My goodness, Harry, show _some_ restraint.”

They all sit on the living room floor and play Monopoly, which Harry is really quite awful at. Tom wins two out of two matches, even with James and Dahlia doing their best to cheat.

“I _hate_ this game,” says a glum Geoff by way of declaring bankruptcy.

Tom counts his stacks of paper money, clearly on the verge of cackling.

“I’m going to go into the office and round up your mother,” James sighs, consulting his watch. “I told her not to let them keep her there any later than eight… Oh, by the way, you older three – you all got into the N.E.W.T.s class. I was very impressed with all of your exams.” He smiles, though it’s a bit strained. “Happy Christmas.”

It’s a bit past nine. Too early to go to bed, too late to do much else.

“Can we watch Rudolph?” asks Dahlia.

Geoff and Henry exchange a loaded glance. “On the Muggle projector?” Henry says. “Dahlia, I don’t quite feel up to it.”

Dahlia blinks twice, paling. “Oh – I forgot. Are we going to get rid of the projector?”

Henry shrugs, hunching over. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. With any of this.”

“I’m going to head off to bed, if no one’s got any better idea,” Tom says with an obviously-fake yawn. “Good night.”

“Er.” Harry rises with him. “G’night.”

Geoff’s eyes widen. He points between the two of them, squinting. “Wait, since when are you two a thing?”

“You’re going to have to phrase your questions with more precision,” Tom says, looping an arm through Harry’s. “I have no idea what you mean.”

They sprint up to their bedroom, holding in laughter as Geoff’s noises of outraged confusion grow behind them.

Tom pins Harry to the closed bedroom door, and Harry lets him.

“So… keeping secrets, are we?”

“No,” Tom says, burying his nose in Harry’s new hair. “Just trying to drive dear Geoffrey off his rocker.”

Harry pushes him off, snickering. “That’s cruel.”

“Oh, but he makes it so easy.”

Harry grins despite himself. “You look nice with your hair like that.”

“I know.” Tom puts his hands on the back of Harry’s head, mapping the texture of his shorn hair.

Harry shivers at the feel of it, and Tom grins. “I like your hair like this, too.”

“You’ve said that.”

“It’s _true_.”

Harry kisses him, then, because he’s tired of the conversation, but mostly because the short hair really does suit Tom, and because his face looks warm in the low light, and because he wants another sip of nectar.

When they wake up on Christmas morning, the haircut is still firmly in place.

“This is a truly excellent Yuletide gift,” Tom says, touching it.

“Good,” Harry says. “Because that’s all you’re getting.”

“Is that so?”

They don’t go downstairs until noon, when Geoffrey knocks on the door, confused and asking, “are you awake yet?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to split this chapter into two parts so this nice fluffy moment can stand on its own. So, surprise early update! 
> 
> Expect the second half of the chapter this weekend at the normal time.


	22. Bird in Hand

It’s too late in the morning for Tom to still be this warm and sleepy, but perhaps this is how Yule is supposed to feel.

They’re eating a brunch of quiche and out-of-season raspberries. Lily looks about ready to use her meal as a pillow, Dahlia’s covertly playing her Game Boy under the table, and Henry’s brow is furrowed with some concern he doesn’t seem yet ready to share.

Harry keeps glancing at Tom, eyes bright, dimpling. Their socked feet touch under the table. This is the source of the warmth in his belly. Kissing Harry, it turns out, is a thousand times more wonderful than he had even dreamed. Even the looming specter of war can’t dampen that.

“Right!” James says with forced cheer. “Who’s ready for presents?”

“I am,” Dahlia says solemnly.

“Uh, me too,” says Geoff.

Lily blinks slowly down at the floral tablecloth, then looks up at James. “I… oh, yes, dear. Presents.”

“D’you need a Pepper-Up, love?”

Lily waves him off and makes for the living room, Dahlia bouncing in her wake. James rushes after her, obviously concerned.

“Has she been sleeping?” Harry asks.

Henry shakes his head silently.

“James will get through to her,” Tom says bracingly. “He knows her best.”

The other boys stare back at him. James’s three sons are all so different, but in this moment, they wear the same expression: tension around their mouths, trust in their eyes. Each of them inherited their father’s eyebrows. Looking at them all united in their worry makes Tom feel a wave of quiet nostalgia.

They join the rest of the family upstairs, in front of the tree.

“Right.” Lily smiles, eyes fixing in on Tom and Harry. “Tom, I know your seventeenth birthday is in just a few days, but James and I have been talking. We want to adopt the two of you in an official capacity, give you access to the family vaults and the Potter name.”

Tom feels suddenly, urgently sick.

“So?” James is saying. He’s grinning brilliantly, and Geoff is slapping Tom on the back, and Lily is unveiling a thick stack of paperwork, smiling through her exhaustion. “What d’you say, boys?”

“Of _course_ ,” Harry says, eyes the luminous gray of a cloud over the sun.

Tom swallows. His magic lashes around his feet, but he reigns it back. _No, don’t have an emotional reaction: sort through your thoughts. What’s wrong?_

He has been presented with a choice. An offering. ‘Tom Potter’.

Something in him recoils at the name, the _commonness_ of it, the three plodding syllables strung together. To abandon his unknown legacy for _that_ – but ‘Potter’ means something different to wizards. Stability and cleverness, an old merchant family with overseas connections he couldn’t previously have dreamed of.

This is poker. Bet the Potter fortune on the name ‘Marvolo,’ or take the songbird perched in his hand.

Christ. Tom is _good_ at poker. He _knows_ what the right choice is here; there’s no contest. And yet…

He’s spent his whole life dreaming of his unknown bloodline, spinning webs of imagined family. He’s _not_ no one. He’s a half-blood. Harry had told him so, and there’s something there, something to unravel –

Tom thinks of the unspeak-seal on the nape of Harry’s neck, the way it had choked him when he dared to so much as mention Tom’s mother. A fortune, or a dream? No, no contest at all.

“I can’t accept,” he says, pleased to find his voice steady.

Geoffrey freezes with his hand on Tom’s back. James’ face droops. Dahlia cocks her tiny, pale head to the side. Henry’s expression focuses into a pinpoint, boring into him with shocking green intensity. Lily’s face has gone empty in a way Tom is familiar with from the Slytherins.

Harry, though… Tom is afraid of Harry sometimes. He doesn’t like to admit it to himself, but the essence of Harry – power and hidden knowledge, the studied blankness he sometimes retreats to – reminds him sometimes of why he’d so disliked Harry during his first month in this time.

Now, Tom is reminded of the prickling uncertainty Harry represents, the threat inherent in his very existence. Because Harry’s looking at him with Lily’s blankness and Henry’s intensity combined, in a way that could mean anything at all. ‘ _I know you better than you know yourself_ ,’ Harry had told him, in the breath before they dueled, that long-ago June evening.

In some ways, that was an eternity ago, a different Tom. But those words have haunted him. When Harry looks at him like this, what does he see?

“Tom,” James says, smiling a little, gently, like this is an unfunny joke. “You can accept. In fact, I’m asking you to. We _want_ to be your family in law as well as practice.”

“No,” Tom says. “The offer means a great deal to me, but –”

“This is an ego thing, isn’t it?” Harry demands. “This is about your fucking _legacy_.”

“And what if it is?”

“Tom – you can be two things at once! Accepting this family doesn’t mean you can’t keep looking for where you came from.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Obviously not.”

The Potters watch the outburst with wide eyes. Tom realizes they aren’t used to seeing these kinds of displays from the two of them – Tom is infallibly polite most of the time, and Harry generally behaves well in front of his parents.

A crumpled ball of wrapping paper on the floor turns into an enormous, warped moth. Tom glares at it, trying to will himself back into calmness.

Harry follows his gaze and raises an eyebrow.

“We respect your decision,” Lily says.

Tom folds his hands in his lap and tries to relax his tense jaw. “Thank you. I’m… sorry.”

“No need for apologies!” James says, more strained than ever. “Let’s get everyone their gifts, yeah?”

Tom pastes a smile onto his face. All the warmth in him is gone. He feels cold, distant.

Does James know that Dahlia isn’t his biological daughter? He must. Does Henry suspect? Does Geoffrey?

No, this family is bound for ruin. Best, then, to distance himself.

Harry’s no longer bothering to hide his glare. At least, Tom thinks, he’ll be able to call him ‘Potter’ in public now.

***

“Happy birthday.” A warm weight on his chest wakes Tom on the morning of the 31st. Harry’s sitting on him through his quilt, adjusting his glasses and smiling.

Tom rubs salt out of his eyes and yawns. “So you’ve forgiven me?”

“I forgave you three days ago,” Harry says. “It’s not fair to ignore you over something like that… being angry with you for being a self-obsessed bastard is like being angry at a bird for singing. But I thought I ought to draw it out a bit. This whole kissing thing makes for nice leverage.”

Tom huffs, still sleepy. He reaches up to touch Harry, who plucks his hand out of the air and holds it before himself, examining.

“You have pretty hands.”

“I know.”

Harry grazes a kiss across his knuckles.

“Ew,” Tom snatches it back, turning over and dumping Harry onto the ground. “You’re such a weirdo, _honestly_.”

Harry sprawls out on the rug, limbs askew, smiling.

“Them adopting us both would have made _this_ sort of weird, anyway.”

“Didn’t even think of that.” Harry pulls a face. “Ugh.”

“Are we going to go bake?”

Harry stretches distractingly. “Mm, sure. Wha’d’you want?”

“Frosted pumpkin bread with chocolate chips.”

“Again?”

“Uh huh.”

They trundle downstairs together, still not completely at ease after the argument.

“You didn’t invite anyone over, did you?” Harry asks, standing on his tiptoes to fiddle around in the spice drawer.

“I don’t feel like it’s quite the time for celebrations.” Tom leans against the counter. “Unless Henry’s decided to host another little gathering, it’ll just be us.”

“No more sexy grandpas for you.” Harry clucks sorrowfully. “Truly a letdown.”

“Are you ever going to get over that? I swear, between you and Draco…”

“He called you, what, a ‘ _rascal_ ’? I mean, come on, Tom.”

“You’re just jealous.”

“Yeah, that’s it. I, too, want elderly folk to hang around and reminisce about school days with me.”

Despite himself, Tom has to chuckle at the deliberate misunderstanding. Harry glances over his shoulder at him, eyes radiant, and Tom lets out a breath. They’re going to be okay, the two of them. “Can I help?”

Harry gives him a whisk and a mixing bowl, and they work in comfortable silence.

The bread goes into the oven, leaving Tom with gloves of flour and a bag of chocolate chips to filch from.

“So much has changed since last year,” Harry says.

“Last year we had just been dumped into this time. This year…”

“It’s like as soon as I felt like I’d adjusted, everything shifted. Nothing is as I thought it was.”

Tom’s not sure if he’s referring to the Muggle threat, Dahlia’s parentage, the attack on the Forest, or the darkness within himself. Perhaps all of it.

“And I know we fight, and that I don’t always handle conflict well,” Harry says. “But I’m, er. I’m glad that you’ve been here, this past year. I – happy birthday, Tom. Thank you for being my constant.”

Tom looks up. Harry’s doing the cleaning up, looking bashful. _You utter sap_. “Harry.”

“Fuck off, it’s your birthday. I’ve a license to say nice stuff to you.”

“Oh, come here,” Tom says, and they spend ten minutes getting flour in each other’s hair. Harry tastes like nutmeg and sugar.

Harry pulls away eventually, wonderfully rumpled, and busies himself with getting the bread out of the oven.

They end up eating the whole thing together, sitting at the kitchen table and watching the shifting gray shadows of the birch wood.

***

“I can’t believe you two idiots were _right_ about that whole ‘impending war’ thing,” Theo says, slamming open the door to their train compartment.

“Repeat that?” Tom says dangerously.

Pansy doubles over, laughing. “Shit, Theo, have some self-preservation instinct!”

“Um,” Theo sits down on the far side of the compartment, looking even paler than usual. “So. War. Yeah. You and Harry were right about that whole thing. ‘Cause, y’know, you’re both perfectly functional, intelligent people who are always right.”

Tom snorts, but lets it slide.

“It’s just Muggles, though,” says Daphne. “I mean, what are they going to do? Poke us with swords?”

Justin arrives, Eliza on his heels. “Hello, everyone.”

“Don’t underestimate Muggles, Daph,” says Michael. “You know what guns are, don’t you? They can kill people more efficiently than any spell. They’ve landed on the _moon_. They – I mean, y’know what a bomb is? They have enough bombs to explode the _entire world_ if they wanted.”

“They do?” Pansy wets her lips. “I didn’t know that. I knew they’d had some kind of technological boom, but not enough to outpace the magical world.”

Tom laughs sharply. “They outpaced us generations before I was even born. Between coal and the scientific method, they’ve been progressing exponentially for centuries.”

Justin nods, looking nervous. Muggleborn, Tom remembers.

“What, so you think we might be in danger?” Daphne asks.

“If we don’t adapt? Yes,” Tom says. “But the magical world has been stagnating for a long time. It’s about time something shook us up. Even Grindelwald, back in my time, didn’t pose enough of an existential threat to Britain to prompt any sort of advancement in magic or thinking.”

“You say that like this is a good thing,” Susan says. Harry nods slightly, eyes narrowed.

“I’m trying to be… optimistic,” Tom says. “If this conflict is going to happen, we’ll need to take advantage of it for all it’s worth.”

“I… war is never for the best,” Harry says, shaking his head. “There is no benefit that could make fighting this one worthwhile. War leaves scars on a people. None of us would survive unscathed.”

And Harry, of all people, should know.

“All that philosophy is useless to us now,” Calcifer says. “I mean, at this point there’s really no way to avert a war, right? Those utter barbarians attacked a _hospital_. We can’t just not retaliate, not knowing that they could pull a stunt like that at any given moment.”

A knock on the compartment door, and Luna sticks her gold head inside. “May I come in?”

“Of course,” Harry says, the steel in his eyes softening.

“If I might,” she says, “I find that philosophy is never useless. Least of all in times of war.”

Theodore, rolling his eyes, erects a belated anti-eavesdropping ward.

“What would _you_ know about times of war?” Lyra asks, not unkindly.

“Just what I’ve read in books,” Luna says, fiddling with one of the bands looped around her bony wrist.

“You Ravenclaws are all the same,” Michael says. It’s probably meant to be a mild insult, but it’s weakened by the book open on his own lap, apparently forgotten amidst the debate.

The train grumbles to life under their feet. Tom takes one last glance out the window, searching out Lily and James one last time before their departure. He can’t find them through the coal dust and gathered mass of parents.

***

There’s snow on the ground at Hogwarts, a thin layer of it, crunching under their boots on the way up to the castle.

The student body is jumpy, quiet. Tom is reminded of the days after Grindelwald’s first strikes on France, when the entirety of the country seemed to be holding its breath.

He watches them all from the Slytherin table, the hushed quality to conversations, the grim expressions of staff.

James, Lupin, and Snape are clustered together, Lupin talking with his hands, Snape nodding along solemnly. Dahlia, sitting at the fringes of Hufflepuff, stares up at the grimy misery of the sky through the enchanted ceiling. Henry, in Ravenclaw, is kissing Draco as if his lips might save them both from the looming terror on the horizon.

He feels the anxiety in himself, too, but it’s strangely muted.

Dumbledore’s not going to kill him. Tom feels strangely invincible at the thought, even among the rest of the chaos. Harry can say what he will, but there is war coming, heavy on the air, and Tom at least is well-placed to weather it.

God knows he’s scarred enough already. He can deal with new wounds.

The Slytherin common room is packed when they return to the dungeons. The eyes of many of the younger years track Tom. He’s tutored some of them, charmed others. Three semesters in this time, and he’s already a leader to them.

A hollow victory, given the circumstances, but he likes the feel of their eyes on him regardless. He smiles, exudes confidence, watches as they relax at the mere sight of his easy grace.

“They’ve taken out the arcade machines,” Calcifer says. “That’s good, I suppose…”

Harry’s lips tighten. Tom knows how he had liked the games, the funny little deals he could strike with other players. The ‘pixeconomy’, wasn’t that what the Slytherins had called it?

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” Daphne says. “I suppose this is what we get for allowing this sort of cultural mixing.”

“Grandfather never did approve,” says Lyra.

“It certainly wasn’t the done thing back in the day.” Tom pauses, looking around. Time for him to consult with the seventh years. “Meet in our common in an hour.”

He’s exhausted when he gets back. The seventh years are all terrified. They’re mere months away from being thrown into the adult world.

Justin is playing his little pocket game again. Tom tilts his head, wondering after the function of the long antennae-like extension protruding from it.

“Would you put that thing away?” Lyra asks in the soft voice that says she’s truly irritated. “I really don’t think it’s appropriate in a time like this.”

Justin does, though he doesn’t look happy about it.

Pansy, walking in with Theo, screams suddenly, and they all jump. “Riddle! You actually did it! You finally made a move!”

Tom pinches the bridge of his nose, wondering if Pansy would hold a grudge if he were to hex her now.

“Has Harry seen the furniture?”

Harry comes in at that moment, seemingly confused by the traffic in the doorway. Tom smiles at him over Pansy’s shoulder, feeling his heart lighten.

Harry cocks his head. Tom just pats the seat next to him. His throne-like chair from before break has morphed into a couch for two.

Harry laughs at the sight, but comes forward nonetheless, settling into his new seat. Daphne leads a half-sarcastic round of applause as they take each other’s hands.

The world is crumbling, but at least he has this. _Harry Potter_.

Tom can’t fathom how he survived without him.


	23. Snakeskin and Daffodils

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spring arrives at Hogwarts, Harry reveals a secret, and Tom is a literal housecat.

Tom’s in the library again, burrowed into his ancient genealogy texts. Harry lurks in the stacks, touching the brand on the back of his neck and weighing his words.

He watches Tom’s brow crease as he sets the book aside to fall back in his chair, frustration written plainly across his pale face. Tom doesn’t know Harry’s watching – it’s interesting to look at him like this, when there’s no one around for him to perform for.

Harry wonders if he regrets refusing the Potter name. Tom's still made no progress on the project of finding his biological family, and he’s confided in Harry that he’s not sure anyone had even bothered to record his grandfather’s birth. Wizards, apparently, take terrible records.

“Tom,” Harry says softly. Tom looks up, a handful of rapid blinks the only sign of his surprise.

“Ah. Hello, Harry.”

“I have a late birthday present for you.”

Tom folds his latest book shut, standing. “I thought you weren’t going to get me anything else,” he says, smiling slowly. “What is it, then?”

“I can’t tell you,” Harry says.

Tom frowns, looking him up and down.

 _He thought it was going to be a kiss or something_ , Harry thinks with amusement. _How unoriginal does he think I am_? He taps the un-speak seal meaningfully.

Tom’s eyebrows shoot up.

“We’re going to experiment with this thing a bit, see if I can’t be more useful than those books of yours.”

“Okay,” Tom says, eyes bright and hungry.

“I’ve tried writing information down,” Harry explains in a low voice as they slip out of the library. “The ink just… doesn’t stick to the paper. But I don’t think it can stop me from leading you places and saying very convoluted things.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’re not going to find your family in the library, Tom, that’s for sure.”

“The Room of Requirement?”

“There are worms in the plumbing.”

“Noted,” Tom says, smiling now. He likes a game. “Can you come up with a hint that makes a bit more sense?”

“One of the girl’s restrooms has a sink that makes this funny hissing noise.”

Tom licks his lips. “I… yes. Okay. Give me another.”

“Hogwarts is really an enormous place. You’d be surprised at how many parts of it are hidden away.”

“Hidden away for millennia, even,” Tom says, breathy with excitement.

Harry bites his lip, feeling weirdly proud. Tom is just so _clever_. “Exactly.”

Tom takes his hand. Harry squeezes it, feeling the slight tremble of apprehension in Tom’s bony digits.

Myrtle’s bathroom is not quite as abandoned as Harry remembers. Of course, in this time there’s no bespectacled ghost to ward everyone away.

“I spent _years_ looking for it,” Tom says. “I was convinced it was just a myth by the end.”

A little girl with bright red hair gives them a funny look on her way out of the restroom.

Tom makes to go in, but Harry drags him back. “We can’t just wander into a girl’s toilet. There could be people using it.”

“Oh, fine,” Tom says, and they spend the next ten minutes Disillusioned, Confounding anyone who tries to go inside.

“That should be long enough,” Harry decides, and they strip away their invisibility and venture into the bathroom.

It hasn’t been long enough. Harry curses himself, freezing in the doorway, but Katie Bell, the old Gryffindor Chaser, has already glimpsed him in the mirror. Her eyes are puffy.

“Katie? Are you okay?” Harry asks, feeling horribly awkward.

She turns, looking him over. “I’m sorry, do I know you…?”

Harry shrinks under her gaze, remembering himself – this is a new time, and a new Katie. What must she see in him? A Slytherin stranger looking back at her with colorless eyes, no longer scrawny…

“ _Confundus_ ,” Tom says, and Katie sways, expression fogging over. “ _We’re_ not out of place here,” he tells her. “But _you_ should really be on your way.”

“Right,” she says, shuffling past them. “Well, see you around…”

Harry watches her go, feeling ill at ease in his own skin.

“One of the sinks, you said?” Tom strides forward, pocketing his wand.

“Yeah.”

“And the brand’s not giving you any trouble?”

“No. I don’t think the Unspeakables accounted for _showing_ ‘forbidden knowledge’ as opposed to just telling someone about it… actually, that’s worth a test. Let me do it.”

Harry walks over to the sinks, finding the little snake etched into the pewter. He hesitates, grappling suddenly with a ghost of who was. Who he _should_ be.

Letting Tom into the Chamber of Secrets is a betrayal of his younger self. This action, surely, is more heinous even than their kisses in the darkness or his Patronus’s new form.

It’s not worse than Obliaviating professors until their minds melt, though. Not worse than the sight of an Auror’s corpse rotting away on the forest floor.

Tom’s watching him with restrained eagerness. He looks just like the boy from the diary, handsome even under the watery light of the bathroom, eyes feverish.

“ _Open_ ,” Harry hisses. _There’s no good or evil_.

The sink unfurls, metal sliding away, the mirror above it melting into the floor. Beyond waits a void. Harry breathes in, smelling the same mix of wetness and decay he remembers from second year.

Tom laughs at the sight of the dark pit, high and victorious. And then he’s kissing Harry, pinning him against one of the normal sinks. He’s all teeth in his excitement, and Harry tastes blood on his lips when they break apart.

“How do we get down?” Tom asks, fingers drumming an impatient beat into the back of Harry’s neck.

“It’s like a water slide,” Harry says. “But with slime instead of water.”

“Gross,” Tom says, not actually looking all that perturbed.

“Meet you at the bottom,” Harry says viciously, and pulls Tom down the chute with him.

They cling to each other on the slide down to the Chamber. Tom screams, and Harry laughs at him, and then they’re at the bottom, sprawled down in a thick layer of grime and rodent skeletons.

“You absolute _bastard_ ,” Tom says, still too delighted to be any level of intimidating. “Look at this, my robes are ruined.”

“Shame,” Harry says distractedly. “Fair warning, Tom, there’s, er,” but the brand clamps down over his throat.

“What was that?”

“ _Worms in the plumbing_. Big danger noodle. Er.”

“The monster of Slytherin,” Tom translates. “Some kind of giant snake, I’m guessing? Harry, you could just say ‘giant snake.’ I don’t… you’re so weird.” He has sat up, and is looking at Harry like he wants to start kissing him again.

“Focus, Tom.”

“How did _you_ even know this place was here? Do the Potters have some well-hidden Slytherin lineage that no one bothered to keep proper records of?”

Harry scoffs.

“One of these days, I’ll figure out how to deal with that brand. And then you will have no excuse to be this enigmatic.”

“No fun in that,” Harry says. This should be surreal, shouldn’t it? Returning to the sodden underbelly of Hogwarts, with Tom Riddle along for the ride? Now that he’s gotten over the initial shock, though, it just feels kind of… normal. “But seriously, Tom, we’re going to want some kind of eye protection.”

“It’s a _basilisk_ ,” Tom says, finally putting that together. “Oh. Right. That – that _is_ a ‘danger noodle’. Huh. _Right_.”

“It will obey you.”

“Because of the Parseltongue.”

Harry swallows. “No. It wouldn’t obey any old Parseltongue – me, for instance.”

Tom pauses, parsing this.

“You know the myth of this place.”

“They say it will only open for the Heir of Slytherin. You’re saying –”

The brand won’t let him do anything but nod slightly.

Tom laughs then, wild and unrestrained, smiling in a way that shows far too many teeth. He stands, surveying the scattered bones. Surveying Harry. “I _knew_ it. I knew I wasn’t common.”

“You could never be _common_ , Tom. No matter who your parents were.”

“I am what I am because of the blood in my veins, Harry. That’s how genetics works. I’ve _read_ about it. Oh, if the others could see me now…”

Harry gets to his feet, feeling suddenly that he’s made a terrible mistake.

But then Tom’s kissing him, holding him at his skull and between his shoulder blades, and Harry feels an answering hunger in himself.

“I like you because of you, and the person you choose to be,” he growls. “Your ancestors can stay the fuck out of that, all right?”

“You’re ridiculous,” Tom says, kissing the lightning bolt scar.

Harry shoves him away, full of a thousand conflicting emotions.

“Okay,” Tom says, shucking off his destroyed robe and rolling up his sleeves. “Let’s do this. I can conjure us some blindfolds.”

“You could do that neat heat-sensing spell again.”

“Snakes are ectothermic.”

“Huh?”

“They don’t have body heat. That spell won’t help us see the basilisk.”

“Oh.” Harry bites his lip.

“We’ll navigate by sound.”

“Okay.” If he could do it as a twelve-year-old, Harry figures, he can do it now.

They set off down the tunnel, sticking close together, light from Harry’s wand reflecting slickly off the walls.

“This is where I took my revenge on the person who vanished all the bones in my arm,” he says conversationally. “Be careful, I think the ceiling here’s pretty unstable.”

“Noted,” Tom says, voice warming with amusement.

Soon they come up on the intricate door to the Chamber proper, with its gaudy jewels and engraved snakes. Tom seems to puff up beside him, eyes dark in the wandlight. Harry elbows him in an attempt to puncture some of his grandiose fantasies.

“ _Open_ ,” Tom tries, and practically vibrates with glee as the door grinds open.

Harry grabs him and turns him around. “Blindfolds.”

“I want to at least see the space. I won’t look into its eyes.”

Harry hesitates. He has a point, but Harry’s seen enough bodies crumpled in the center of the Chamber for a lifetime. “If you’re not careful, I’m going to _murder_ you.”

“Or avenge me,” Tom says, the manic edge to his smile not diminished.

Harry wonders what Tom would think if he knew the details of Harry’s first visit to the Chamber. A girl with flame-red hair, a diary bleeding ink out into the damp floor; a patched hat and a songbird.

It’s unlike Tom to be so cavalier about the reality of his own mortality.

Before Harry can really dwell on this, Tom is moving forward, catching Harry’s hand and pulling him along.

Harry pinches his eyes shut so he’s looking at the Chamber through the thin veil of his eyelashes. The pale cave formations, the constant drip of water down into the pools along the edges of the room, the looming statue: it’s exactly as he remembers. Perhaps a bit dirtier – had the other Tom done a bit of cleanup?

“ _Hello_?” Tom hisses. “ _Is anyone there_?”

Harry pulls him closer, not sure if he’s trying to protect Tom or himself. He closes his eyes fully, straining his ears, but there’s no sound save the musical dripping of water.

“ _I am the Heir. Show yourself_.”

There – what’s that? A slither? Something drops to the stone floor and bounces. Then another. Pebbles, raining from above, displaced by something enormous.

He’s gripping Tom’s hand so tightly that he can feel his own pulse in his fingertips, jittering out of control. Had he been this afraid as a twelve-year-old? If he had, he can’t remember it. This time, at least, the Heir is on his side.

It’s a pale comfort. Harry realizes that he’s not afraid for his own life.

Something new hits the ground, an enormous crunching weight that Harry feels the vibrating force of.

Tom laughs again, more high-pitched now.

“ _Two humans? Fresh Heir… and fresh blood. Smells of sheep… stinky wool. Yes. I will rupture it for you, Heir, yes… rend its heart from its chest… feed and feast and rip-tear-shred…_ ”

“No,” Tom yelps. “I – _you won’t be shredding anyone right now. This is my friend._ ”

“ _Hello_ ,” Harry says helpfully, feeling much calmer now that they’re actually talking to the danger.

“ _The last Heir brought me food_ ,” the basilisk says, tone darkening. The slip-crunch of its movement starts up again – it’s coming closer. Oh, this was such a terrible idea. “ _She let me feast freely upon her enemies!_ ”

“ _She had a lot of enemies, then?_ ” Harry asks. He’s never started a snake on a villainous monologue, but if he can buy Tom some time to think, they’ll have a better shot at getting out of this without any shredding or tearing of flesh.

The slithering of the basilisk pauses. “ _Just the one_ ,” it says a bit forlornly. “ _But she let me feast freely on steaks!_ ”

“ _Oh_ ,” Harry says. “ _Well, we could bring you some steaks._ ”

There’s a terrible rasping sound from above. Harry isn’t sure what to make of that.

“ _Have you ever tried venison?_ ” Tom says. If Harry’s eyes weren’t closed, he would shoot him a glare.

“ _Is that a steak?_ ”

“ _It’s deer meat_.”

“ _I can’t remember_ ,” the basilisk says, starting to move again. “ _Does it matter? It_ doesn’t _matter, no… I am hungry now… and you have brought fresh sheep meat…_ ”

Harry brandishes his wand in the direction of the voice, battle plans racing through his mind. Blasting spell to the head will stun it long enough to get to the door, but he won’t be able to aim with the necessary precision. Will Tom even _let_ them go for the door? He’s been acting erratically. Too many variables…

“ _How about pig meat?_ ”

“Tom, this is dumb. It’s not working.”

“ _Pig is ham, yes?_ ” says the basilisk.

Harry considers facepalming, but his hands are both occupied holding his wand and his crazy boyfriend. It is ludicrous that this seems to be working.

“ _I very much like pig_.”

“ _You don’t have enough food here in the Chamber, do you? Would you like a new place to live?_ ”

“ _You want me to leave this place? No. I am bound to the castle._ ”

“ _And what of the Forest? It is full of wild boar for the hunting. You could be free there, surrounded by the old magic_.”

“ _I have been told to stay here_.”

“ _Am I not Heir?_ ”

“ _You are Heir_.”

Harry can practically taste Tom’s grin at the confirmation. “ _Well, I’m telling you to go. Can you get to the Forest?_ ”

“ _I can travel the plumbing, but only with the leave of the Heir._ ”

“ _We’ll meet you there, okay? That way you can get food and not feel the need to… to shred anyone_.”

“ _These are your orders?_ ” It sounds amused.

“ _Yes. Meet us in the Forest, and no flaying_.”

There’s a splash, another slithering crunch, and the Chamber goes silent save the ever-present dripping. Hesitantly, Harry opens his eyes. “Well, shit,” he says, at a loss. “Last time I met it, it was a whole lot less reasonable.” The brand prickles, but doesn’t choke him.

Tom looks around the Chamber. “And this is all?”

“What do you mean?”

“I always imagined the Chamber of Secrets would have… _secrets_ , I suppose. It just seems so empty.”

Harry looks around. “It does, doesn’t it.”

“There must be something hidden here,” Tom says, pulling him forwards. “Maybe in the statue?”

Harry isn’t sure quite what to say. He helps Tom look, but after three fruitless hours of combing the space they find nothing. No hidden rooms or engraved stones, no instructions of any kind.

“It’s getting late,” Harry says, glancing habitually at his useless wristwatch. “We should go see the basilisk, or we’ll have to try to track it down after dark.”

Tom pinches the bridge of his nose. Harry backs up a bit, noticing that a nearby cluster of pebbles have transformed into what look like locusts.

“We can come back later,” he offers weakly.

“What’s the point?” Tom says. “It’s obvious there’s nothing here. God, just when I thought…”

“You don’t want Salazar Slytherin’s legacy, anyway,” Harry says. “I mean, what would you even want to find?”

“Books,” Tom says. “I don’t know, maybe some kind of heirloom.”

“Oh, Tom...”

“No, you’re right, it’s silly,” Tom says, clearly unconvinced. “Come on.”

They find the basilisk in the ravine where the snowshoe hares live, draped unmoving among the leaf litter. The sun is near setting, now, bathing them all in red-gold light.

“ _I see you’ve eaten_ ,” Tom says, cautious. Harry sticks close by him, watching the great snake with wary eyes. It has shuttered its eyelids, but even so he stares at its massive scaled body rather than its head.

“ _Yes. Will you be sending me back to the Chamber now?_ ”

“ _Do you want to return there?_ ”

“ _No. I want to sleep until this… this venison is digested_.”

“ _How would you feel about living in the Forest, and never returning to the Chamber?_ ”

It flicks out its massive tongue. “ _There_ is _a great deal more space out here_.”

“ _You’re welcome to stay, in that case. I… I free you from the commands of my lineage_ ,” Tom says, sounding fleetingly reluctant. “ _I hope to meet you again, mighty serpent, but for now, farewell_.”

Movement out of the corner of his eyes – a glimpse of yellow? Harry slaps his hand over Tom’s eyes, throwing an elbow over his own.

A rasping, wordless hiss. “ _My apologies, silly humans. But surely you misspoke, Heir_.”

“ _I did not_ ,” Tom says, forcing Harry’s hand out of his face. “ _You are free. Just don’t kill any Hogwarts students, and I consider our dealings over. Live your own life_.”

“ _You are very strange among my Master’s descendants, little one_.”

“ _Goodbye_ ,” Tom whispers. Harry looks up at him and sees the tension in his jaw.

They walk back to the castle in silence as the stars flicker to life above them.

***

Defense becomes Tom’s most challenging class. James, in his role as Professor Potter, seems to have gotten it into his head that it’s his job to get them all battle-ready by the time they graduate.

Harry takes to the new material like a fish to water, learning to cast with a precision and fluidity that quickly outpaces even Tom. Henry has some of that same natural talent, but he can’t read an opponent like Harry can – and, as is becoming abundantly clear, he doesn’t have the same raw magical power as Harry.

“There’s this theory among purebloods that trauma in early development can increase someone’s magical strength,” Tom says later, when they’re alone in their room. He watches Harry’s reaction carefully, the calculation that enters his slate-gray eyes, the wrongness of that expression on his glamoured face.

“You think they might be onto something.”

“Your and Henry’s case study indicates that they are,” Tom says. “But it doesn’t quite make sense… purebloods usually connect the phenomenon to Dark magic used on a child, the same way Darkness can warp an artifact. Not…”

“Plain old neglect and the occasional pummeling from a Muggle of my own age?” Harry scoffs. “I think you might be right, though. D’you remember that first summer, when the Unspeakables took Henry and I away to do those tests? I didn’t understand, then, why they even brought him in.”

“They were testing your magical strength?” Tom hums. “At the time… goodness, I’m not sure what I thought that was about. I was used to feeling confused, that summer.”

Harry laughs, eyes luminous. “I don’t think I’ve stopped feeling confused for… for _years_ , now. Oh, there are so many stories I wish I could tell you, Tom.”

Tom moves over so he can put a careful arm around Harry, who melts gratefully against him. Something tells him Harry’s not talking about the Unspeakables anymore.

“I worry, sometimes, that you don’t even know me,” Harry says softly. “You understand me better than anyone ever has, I think, but there are entire chunks of myself that just… just disappeared when we came here.”

The wood of Tom’s heart feels too inflexible sometimes, like his body has remembered it’s not meant to be there. Harry’s words make the places where flesh meets plant matter _ache_.

He knows too well how much of Harry’s past is hidden from him. Long ago, he converted his diary to a sketch of who Harry was, a map of tiny inconsistencies and traumas.

Harry was born on the 31st of July. Sometime between the ages of one and two, he’d been orphaned by a man with a reptilian mask for a face, a man whom Tom could have become. From there, he’d been left to the mercies of Lily’s sister’s family, who had locked him in cupboards and starved him until he was reduced to eating spiders. From there: Hogwarts, and Gryffindor, and a friendship with hardened versions of Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley.

Interspersed within that delicate framework – all conjecture. The old Hufflepuff Seeker felled by an _Avada_ bolt, Harry stumbling upon the Chamber, the continued stalking of the Tom-that-never-was. Sometimes Harry tells jokes, smiling in a way that never reaches his eyes: he mentions a swim in the Black Lake, fighting dragons, fame; half-giants and hippogriffs; lightning bolt scars and a magical parasite in a jar.

“I know enough to lo – to care for you,” Tom says.

Harry breathes in deeply. Tom feels the motion of it through his wiry shoulders. “Maybe I’m more worried that _I_ know too _much_ , then.”

Tom flinches away, but Harry is turning to him, holding him by the jaw.

“ _Look_ at me, Tom.”

He does. Harry’s beautiful, even in this false face. The arc of his neck, the messy glory of his cropped hair, the bottle-thick distortion of his glasses. He’s biting his lip, now, and Tom thinks he sees the glossy weight of tears in his eyes.

“You’re not that monster, Tom. You’re my best friend.”

“Harry, I – I’m not right. Inside. You know that. I hurt – people get hurt when I’m angry. You’ve never seen me properly angry… sometimes, I _like_ seeing things hurt.”

Harry scowls into his shoulder. “I’m just as fucked up as you are, you idiot. God, why do you think I was so _scared_ of you? We’re the same.”

Tears prick the backs of Tom’s eyes. He tries to turn away, hide it, but Harry’s still got a grip on his face. “Harry –”

Harry mashes their mouths together, and they both taste of salt and mucus. It’s gross. Tom couldn’t care less.

***

They’ve formed a little study group for their Dark Arts class.

Harry, Tom, Henry, and Hermione are the first members, and for a while it’s just the four of them. But then Calcifer starts tagging along as well, at Tom’s invitation, and then Theo and Lyra want in. From there, word spreads, and the rest of the class – Blaise Zabini, Fey Crouch, and Delila Snyde –join.

Blaise is extremely handsome, and vicious for a Hufflepuff. Tom adores him.

Delila Snyde, a Gryffindor, has piercings and glossy black hair. Tom would be much fonder of her if he wasn’t also convinced that Harry finds her very attractive. When Tom tries to bring this up with him, though, he just gets laughed at. He’s not quite sure what to make of that.

It’s spring now, and they’re meeting on the ninth floor in some little room Henry discovered hidden behind a tapestry of a bloody hunting falcon. Hermione has opened the windows, letting in a lukewarm breeze and the drowsy scent of daffodils.

Tom lounges happily on a transfigured desk. Fey and Blaise are supposed to be dueling, and the others are meant to be critiquing them, but they’ve all gotten distracted by a debate over the homework.

“All I’m saying,” Henry says, “is that I don’t see the point of applying the wolfsbane mix when you’ve already left it in the specified environment. I mean, it’s the same exact spell, right? It should mutate in the same way.”

“You’re forgetting the randomness principle,” Calcifer says.

“The randomness principle makes _zero sense_.”

“I wish Snape would let us do more practical work,” says Fey. “Father told me it all sort of clicked for him when he raised his first artifact.”

“‘Raised it’?” Lyra hums. “I’ve never heard anyone put it like that. I like it.”

“He lets us do plenty of practical work,” Henry says. “I mean, just yesterday we had that globe thing to look at. That was _awesome_.”

“That _was_ awesome,” Fey agrees dreamily.

Calcifer sighs. “Fey’s _point_ was that we don’t get to manipulate our own artifacts or anything. I mean, it’s difficult to learn all this stuff without actually seeing it.”

Delila yawns. “Speak for yourselves. I managed to wrangle one of my necklaces into an artifact over the summer.” She pauses, pulling on one of the silver studs in her ear. “Of course, it also tried to eat me. So not a total success.”

“Over the summer?” Hermione says. “Delila, please tell me you weren’t breaking underage magic laws to create an illegal, unregulated, _dangerous_ Dark artifact.”

“Oh, Merlin, I forgot what a stickler for the rules you are, Granger. Remind me to bring some alcohol to this thing next time. I mean, I think we could all stand to unwind a bit, but you in particular.”

Hermione huffs, reddening, as a grinning Blaise starts up a chant of, “fight! Fight! Fight!”

It’s all incredibly juvenile. Tom exchanges a look of exasperation with Harry.

Harry, heaving a great sigh, stands. “Shut up,” he says mildly.

They do.

“Didn’t expect that to work,” he grumbles, looking to Tom for help.

Tom pats Harry idly on the arm. Kid doesn’t know his own power; the pressure differential in the room had shifted as soon as he stood. “It seems to me that everyone is distracted by the nice weather. You’re all dismissed to go elsewhere if you’re done with this study session.”

“Who put you in charge, Riddle?” Delila says.

The others stare at her in disbelief.

“Yeah, dumb question,” she mutters. “Hey, Hermione, how about a friendly duel outside?”

Hermione’s eyes light up at her more genial tone. “Sure.”

Tom lingers in the room, not really wanting to move. He’s found a nice sunbeam, and he’d managed to transfigure the _loveliest_ feather pillow for himself.

Also, Harry’s started playing with his hair, which Tom has discovered he very much enjoys.

The others all file out, save Henry.

Harry, prone to embarrassment for even the most minor public displays of intimacy, stops petting Tom’s hair, which is simply unacceptable.

Reluctantly, Tom sits up and orders his robes.

“Hey,” Henry says, shuffling, wiggling his pocketed hands in such a Harry-like gesture that Tom’s heart squeezes.

“Hey,” he echoes, trying not to seem too wary.

“What’s up?” Harry says.

Henry looks away. “Dad said something funny, the other day.”

“James _is_ known for his sense of humor,” Harry says, smiling, but Tom can feel the mood in the room darkening.

“Go on,” Tom says, tilting his head.

“It’s just – and I don’t – Merlin, I don’t know how to…”

Harry’s hand has landed on the back of Tom’s robes, fisted there like he’s holding Tom up by his scruff. “Henry,” Tom says. “It’s okay. You can talk to us about it.”

“That’s the thing,” Henry says. “Look, the school keeps pretty thorough records of when exam periods happen, _especially_ fifth-year exams. When Professor Longbottom had her – her _accident_ – well… Uncle Severus’s account was that he sensed a magical disturbance, then found the classroom empty except for her, lying on the ground. He made it sound as though she’d been alone with a student, tried to cast a memory charm on them, and had her wand recoil.”

The fist at his scruff tightens. Tom runs the pad of his thumb along the handle of his wand, tucked still in his pocket.

“But that doesn’t make any sense given the exam timeline. Dad said the period when Professor Longbottom disappeared was during… during when _your_ class was supposed to be taking your exams. She shouldn’t have been alone in the classroom at all. You all should have been there, too.”

Tom has no idea what his face must look like. He prods Henry’s mind for a glimpse and tastes Henry’s fear and guilt, sees himself and Harry staring mirrored back in perfect, synchronized blankness.

“Dad thinks it must be a mistake,” Henry says in a small voice. The light behind his fern-green eyes seems dim, his tireless joy depleted. “Please tell me he’s right.”

“Henry,” Harry starts, voice gravelly.

Henry squeezes his eyes closed, trembling. “He’s not, is he? You saw what happened to her. You said _nothing_. Fuck. I should have listened – Hermione _told_ me I ought to be more cautious of the pair of you, she could tell that – that… just what are you _hiding_ , anyway?”

Tom’s lost in Henry’s mind, morbidly fascinated. Henry’s thoughts are as electric as Harry’s, spinning through possibilities and scenarios. Reeling. Betrayed.

This… this hurts. Seeing the pain in Henry’s eyes, knowing it was he who put it there.

“Who _are_ you?”

Tom watches through Henry’s eyes as Harry, expression eerily empty, reaches under his robes to pull the disguise amulet out from under his shirt. He feels Henry’s shock as his own when Harry eases the necklace over his head, revealing bright green eyes and a more angular face.

There’s a beat of silence. Tom’s grip on his wand tightens.

A clatter. Henry has dropped his own wand. He doesn’t stoop to recover it. “I don’t understand,” he says.

“You’re not meant to,” Harry says, slipping the necklace back around his neck. “C’mon, Tom.”

***

The world seems to move in strange ways around them after that. Tom keeps a careful eye on Henry, but Harry seems sure his double isn’t about to snitch.

“What’s _up_ with him?” Geoff asks one weekend, as they watch the Whomping Willow thrash happily on the grounds. “I’ve never seen Henry in such a mood. It’s like he’s – _afraid_ of you and Harry.”

“Don’t be ludicrous,” Tom says, crafting a gently dismissive laugh. “What is there to be afraid of?”

Geoff frowns, but doesn’t press the issue.

Dahlia finds Harry in the hall between classes at least once a day, at seemingly random intervals.

“She wants hugs,” Tom hears him explain to Lyra. “I mean, she’s lovely, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know quite what all this is about. She seems distressed… well, I suppose everyone’s a bit on edge right now.”

“Such a sweet girl,” Lyra says. “But she doesn’t look a lick like James, if you get my drift. I don’t suppose you know anything about that little situation…”

Exams are coming up. Tom wishes, sometimes, that he could be like the others and lose himself in studying, but he knows the material inside out at this point.

“I need a distraction,” he tells Harry one afternoon, startling him out of his reading.

Harry looks up, massaging his temples. “Tom, I don’t have the time to make out with you right now.”

“Not _that_ kind of distraction,” Tom says. “I want to borrow your watch.”

“Er,” Harry says. “Sure.”

And then Tom has a project, in trying to ‘raise’ Harry’s battered gold wristwatch into a Dark artifact. He makes no real progress, just as when he and Harry had tried the same thing a year ago, but it’s soothing regardless, to sink magic in and out of the metal, frame new characterizations in his mind to see if one will stick.

Summer settles heavily upon them. Harry manages to cajole half their year – a handful of their Housemates, plus most of Gryffindor and a few Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws – into taking a dip in the Black Lake.

On the verge of war or not, they’re still children. Tom refrains from the watersports, curling up in the shade of a weeping willow while pretending to work on an essay for Transfiguration. In reality he’s just watching Harry, his lean brown muscle and the gold of sunlight on his bare back. He can see the ram surging under his skin, proud and glorious. The unicorn urges Tom to get up and join them all, but the state of his heart hardly allows for public bathing.

In late autumn, Luna had planted flowers in the place where the oaks had once grown, snapdragons and chrysanthemums and hopeful yellow daffodils. Now they’re blooming, sprouting out of the empty bones of the manticore and softening the stark cairns.

Tom still spends hours wandering the woods, sometimes with Harry, sometimes without. He sees the basilisk sometimes. More often, he finds the evidence of it: great slithering tracks though the mud, stone statues of deer frozen on riverbanks, staring forever into the rippling surface of the water. The unicorns are gone. There’s no sign of Peryle’s herd, and the Dark Market seems to have been simply swallowed up by the earth.

It’s not the same Forest he had known, but the raw magic of it is still there; Tom can’t give up hope yet. It’s been just over a year since the desecration of the oaks, and the unicorns are timeless. They might still come back.

They learn to Apparate. Tom is a natural, of course. Harry takes a bit longer, but Hermione comes over and coaches him through. She doesn’t _seem_ suspicious of them, but Tom is almost certain Henry’s discussed everything with her. She’d told him to be ‘cautious’ of the two of them. It’s deeply disquieting to think of it. For all he knows, half of Ravenclaw House is secretly aware of their transgressions.

Still, something in Tom trusts the uneasy peace more than he ever did the apparent perfection of this future. There’s comfort to be taken in the horror of the storm brewing on the horizon: this danger, at least, he can _see_.

Harry seems to be the only person in the school who feels the same way as he does about the impending war. “I still want to take you away to Albania,” he tells Tom multiple times.

Tom just laughs, every time he says it, and kisses him.

Draco Malfoy – and the rest of the Ravenclaws, come down to it – seems incredibly nervous. Draco walks into Ancient Runes one day with his nose in some pamphlet a Muggleborn seventh year had churned out. Tom watches him grow progressively paler as he pages through it.

When Professor Babbling dismisses them all to set about their array sketching practice, Draco doesn’t look up from the pamphlet.

“What’s in there, anyway?” says Tom. “I’ve seen several people carrying them about – Fey said they were some sort of informational thing Penderwick made, but I never got a good look at one.”

Draco glances up, guilty. “I shouldn’t be reading in class anyway, should I?” he says. “Here, take a gander for yourself.”

“A GUIDE TO MUGGLE WEAPONRY,” proclaims the title of the pamphlet. Tom frowns down at it. Inked on the front is a little cartoon rifle, happily emitting puffs of smoke.

“Are you sure this is up to date?”

“Penderwick’s Muggleborn,” Draco says. “She knows what she’s talking about. She goes over all the horrifically dangerous newer inventions inside.”

Tom opens it up, and indeed finds a sketch labeled “MACHINE GUN”.

“Why didn’t anyone ever think to tell me about all of this?” Draco says. “I mean, Hermione should have thought to say something! To imagine that the Muggles have been running about with… with _granadas_ stuck up their socks!”

“Grenades,” Tom corrects idly, turning the page.

“Did they even teach the Muggle Studies students about any of this? I mean, I would have thought someone might have warned me. They have Adam bombs, Tom! That leave rad – raid – I mean, I _never_!”

“It is a… troubling situation indeed.”

“You don’t sound troubled.”

Tom shrugs. There’s a hollowness to him, these days. He feels that the world can do what it pleases to him, so long as it lets him keep Harry.

“Back to work, now, boys,” Babbling says, rapping gently on their table and offering Tom a fond smile.

Draco folds away the pamphlet, but pauses with his quill poised above his parchment, dripping ink and ruining his array before he can even start it.

“Tom, Henry’s been strange around you lately. And Lyra keeps making cryptic comments – more cryptic than usual, anyway. I don’t think that she normally says things that way on purpose, but now. Well. It’s definitely on purpose. I just…”

“Draco.”

“You’re going to bear the Mantle, aren’t you?”

Tom glances around covertly. “It seems likely, yes… don’t go around announcing it now, though.”

“I’ll follow you,” Draco says. “In the conflict to come, I’m yours.”

“You’ll make poor Henry jealous, saying things like that…”

“I’m serious, Tom.”

“Thank you, Draco,” Tom says. “Perhaps this will all blow over soon, and things won’t come to that desperate point. Think, most of the Muggles don’t even know we exist.”

“Of course,” Draco says shakily. The point of his quill descends upon his empty page, but instead of tracing the first line of a rune it just stands there, digging through the thick parchment and bleeding dark ink into the white of the paper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone. As ever, your comments mean the world <3  
> 🦩


	24. A Storm of Metal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom try to go on a nice date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an extremely heavy chapter. If you're someone who feels fictional pain deeply, I recommend reading it in the company of a pet and a nice pot of tea. 
> 
> *points at the "death and mourning" tag*

“Tom.”

“Yes?”

“Will you go to Hogsmeade with me?”

“We always go to Hogsmeade together, remember?”

“Uh huh.”

“Is this your way of asking me on a date?”

“This is how you asked me out, over holiday break, but I never got to properly respond.”

“Because you decided to start snogging me.”

“Er, yeah. But it sounded – nice. If I hadn’t gotten distracted, I would have said yes.”

“So this _is_ you asking me on a date.”

“ _Tom_. Yes.”

“In that case, I accept.”

***

“I swear I didn’t intend for this,” Harry says, looking around at the assembled friends. It’s June, two weeks from final exams. When he’d mentioned to Lyra that he and Tom were off to Hogsmeade on a date, she’d taken it as an excellent excuse to get out of the castle – and managed to invite half their dorm along.

“Don’t worry,” Tom says. “We can always sneak off to Madam Puddifoot’s.”

“Excuse me?”

“Draco took me there last year – charming spot, really, the owner is _so_ lovely.”

Harry squints at him. “You’re kidding.”

Tom smirks.

“It wasn’t going to be much of a date, anyway,” Harry says. “I mean, Henry ‘n Geoff ‘n Dahl were going to tag along no matter what we did.”

“I had a plan,” Tom says. “I was going to start scandalously making out with you right in front of Dahlia, so Henry would have no choice but to escort her away to Honeydukes to escape permanent scarring. Then we could politely ask Geoff to go away.”

“That would probably have worked,” Harry admits.

“But not in front of this lot.”

Harry looks over the assembled Slytherins. Calcifer, Justin, Lyra, Pansy, Daphne… “Yeah. If anything, they’d be excited for the show.”

Pansy sneezes.

“Are we still waiting up on anyone?” Calcifer asks, frowning at Harry. He’s stepped down from blatant hostility since winter break, but they still aren’t on the best terms.

“Henry’s not here yet,” Geoff says.

Lyra’s getting a funny look in her eyes, like she’s getting to the point of boredom where she’d rather be provoking a duel than spending any more time waiting. Harry’s about ready to put her out of her misery – it’s been a while since they’ve fought, and he’s feeling testy himself – when Henry finally arrives.

“I see you’ve brought the cavalry,” Tom comments.

Indeed, Henry has brought along not just Draco and Hermione, but also Fey, Dean, Ron, and Neville.

“Couldn’t have you trying to wiggle out of family bonding by trying to pull some devious scheme,” Henry says, not quite making eye contact. “I needed backup.”

Backup against Harry and Tom going off on their own, or against having to be left alone with the two of them? It hurts to see Henry this suspicious of them, but… perhaps it’s what they deserve.

And so, it’s a lumbering, straggling group of fifteen that makes for Hogsmeade that day.

It’s a cold day for almost-summer, the sky veiled by a thin strip of clouds that magnify and refract the light of the sun. Looking up hurts Harry’s eyes, so he keeps his face pointed mostly downward, watching the feet of their ragtag group.

Tom’s boots are pretty, black things; a seventeenth birthday present from Lily and James. He keeps a little bottle of shoe polish for them under his bed.

Harry's own boots are scuffed and worn – they’re the same ones he was wearing when he first slipped through time. He’s had them for over three years now, and there’s a little hole in his left sole that lets in water whenever he steps in puddles. Lily had tried on two separate occasions to get him new ones, but the thought of not wearing these pains him. So little remains of his old life.

The walk to Hogsmeade is pleasant enough, but the pallor of the sky seems to bleach the world out. Under it, Tom’s face looks pale and strained, and the dirt of the path seems gray. The strangeness of walking near the Forest and not hearing the song of the oaks has gone mostly away. Still, there’s a haunting quality to the silence of the trees.

Harry is beginning to get a headache, spurred on by some combination of the bright sky and the incessant chattering of their tagalongs. He rubs at his scar by habit, but this is a deeper pain at his temples. Nothing like the itching crackle of his scar to which he was once accustomed. Still, the pain in his forehead makes him uneasy.

“Anyone want to go into Zonko’s?” Ron says as they draw closer to town. “Fred ‘n George just got some of their fireworks onto the market, and I think they might have them in stock.”

Lyra nods energetically, and many of the others seem similarly enthused.

Tom eyes the orange façade of Zonko’s with distrust.

“Tom’n I will wait out here,” Harry says. “We’ll go for a stroll down Main Street… come find us when you’re done, yeah?”

A vain attempt to shrug off the others; Dahlia hangs back with them, as do Daphne and Calcifer.

Tall purple monkshood plants grow to the side of the road and choke the spaces between buildings. Dahlia lingers, staring at the flowers.

“Careful,” Tom tells her. “They’re poisonous to the touch.”

She takes Harry’s hand. “I know.”

Daphne and Calcifer have drifted off, talking in low voices.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Dahlia says softly, still watching the flowers sway in the soft spring breeze.

“For what?” Harry kneels beside her.

She shakes her head, and he realizes there are tears shining in her dark eyes. “Just – it’s not your fault. Remember that.”

Harry flinches. Does she know what he did to Alice Longbottom?

Tom is studying Dahlia with fascination. “Is something going to happen? When?”

But then, with much laughter and yelling, their friends are piling out of Zonko’s, laden with great purple bottle rockets.

“‘Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes’,” Tom reads off. Harry squints at the rockets and sees the logo he’s looking at, livid orange and spiky. “How _tacky_. I like it.”

Geoff beams. “Here, take one!”

Tom does, looking bemused.

“Honeydukes next!” Draco says authoritatively. “They have this new frozen confection – my father is friends with the witch who came up with it, and she’s sure they’re going to be the next big thing. They have flavors based on all kinds of tea… I had the jasmine one over Yule and it was just _incredible_.”

“Are you okay?” Tom says, hanging back as they trail after the sugar-hungry mob.

“I’m fine,” Harry says. “Just a bit of a headache… D’you reckon Dahlia _knows_ , or was she just being cryptic?”

“Harry, I don’t think she was talking about – about _that_. I – in the course of my research, I found out that the Prince family has a history of Seers, especially in their matriline.”

“The Prince family…? What are you talking about?”

“Snape is descended from the Princes. They’re an old family, but they haven’t been prominent since the early 17th century.”

“So…” Even now, it’s hard for Harry to think of Dahlia as a Snape. “You’re saying you think Dahlia is a Seer?”

Tom shrugs. “Yes. It would go a long way towards explaining some of her… abnormalities. I don’t know if I ever told you this, but I can’t use Legilimency on her – she’s a complete blind spot for me. I don’t think even Dumbledore has as impressive shields as she seems to.”

Harry squints after Dahlia, who is walking rather morosely in Geoff’s shadow. She seems downtrodden today. He hopes she’s all right.

“And it would account for more than just that. She always seems to know where we are in the Forest – and do you remember all that weird stuff with her Game Boy? Not to mention conversations like the one we just had…”

“I dunno, Tom,” Harry says, thinking of shawled Trelawney and her prophecy back in third year. “I don’t think that’s how Seers work. Dahlia’s weird, but…”

Tom sniffs. “Do you have a better explanation?”

“I used to take Divination, you know. Seers don’t just know the future, they… y’know. Recite prophecies with great drama, then keel over with no memory of what they’ve just done.”

“Divination’s useless for those without the gift,” Tom says with the air of someone who’s said that very thing countless times.

“That’s not what ‘the gift’ looks like, though,” Harry says, gesturing towards Dahlia. “I’ve _seen_ a prophecy delivered. It’s fucking creepy, and again: _the prophet has no memory of it afterward_.”

“You’ve seen a prophecy delivered?” Tom says. “Wait, why did the brand even let you say anything about that?”

“Er, I don’t think I ever told the Unspeakables about that prophecy,” Harry says. “One of the least crazy things that’s happened to me, in all honesty.”

“What was it about? Was it about you?”

Harry shrugs. “Not really. It was about… a rat, I suppose.”

“Huh. Well, perhaps not all prophets See in the same way.”

They’ve reached Honeydukes by that point, and pack themselves into a space occupied by far too many sugar-crazed students. Tom lets the topic rest, but Harry’s sense of disquiet is just compounded.

He takes Tom’s hand and receives a comforting squeeze.

“I’ll buy you some chocolate,” he offers.

Tom blinks. “Oh?”

“I need to prove I’m a better boyfriend than Malfoy,” Harry says.

“By buying me chocolate.”

“Oh come on, Tom, you can’t tell me you _liked_ those mango candies he bought you on your little date last year.”

Tom pulls back, looking gleeful. “Wait, how do you even know about that?”

Harry feels heat rush to his face.

“You were stalking me, weren’t you?”

“Don’t look so thrilled. You’re not supposed to be excited about stuff like that.”

“I’m not allowed to be smug that my boyfriend was jealous of my previous dating life? Come now, Harry.”

Harry sighs. “Whatever.”

“So, were you stalking us independently of Henry, or were you together under the Cloak?”

“Wait, how do _you_ know about the Cloak?”

“Draco told me about it. He knew Henry was following us under it – he didn’t explain what was going on until we were in Puddifoot’s, though.”

“ _Tom_. Oh my god.”

“What?”

“Is that when you kissed him? To – to put on some kind of twisted show for us?”

“You’re not still jealous, are you? My goodness, Harry, have _some_ security in our relationship.”

“Tom, you – you _floozy_.”

Tom pinks. “It was a favor for a friend! You can’t blame me too much. You can see as well as I can how good-looking Draco is – if _you_ had the chance to kiss him, you would, too.”

“If we weren’t in a public place right now, I would _strangle_ you, Tom Riddle. He’s _not_ that good-looking.”

“I forgot. Your type is more tall, dark, and handsome, isn’t it?”

Harry tries very hard not to laugh. “You arrogant bastard.”

“It’s _true_ ,” Tom says, even more smug now.

“You know what? You can buy your own goddamn chocolate.”

“This is a terrible date,” Tom says happily.

Despite his best efforts, Harry collapses into giggles.

They each get one of Draco’s new confectionaries – Tom, in a rare show of shame, buys Harry’s. They’re cold and vanilla-sweet, with the light consistency of freshly whipped cream.

Harry’s is earl grey, Tom’s a soft chamomile. They end up sharing, though it gets them whistled mockingly at by Daphne.

A year ago, Harry might have turned her hair blue in retribution. Ever since what he’d done to the manticore, though, the idea of pulling hair pranks makes him feel vaguely ill.

The sky is still irritatingly bright, but it’s warmed slightly outside. They all go for a wander around town, and as Tom takes Harry’s hand, he feels the last of his headache clear away.

They meet up with a pack of seventh year Ravenclaws who Henry and the others seem to know, then a couple of younger Gryffindors who seem excited to see Geoff. As the sun climbs to noon and everyone starts to get hungry for food that isn’t just sweets, it’s an even more enormous group that they bring with them to the Three Broomsticks.

They fill up two large tables in the already-crowded space, but Madam Rosmerta gets them all seats and bring them out trays of chips and Butterbeer with relatively little fuss.

“I feel out of place with all of them,” Harry remarks quietly, leaning back to look at the high rafters arching over these tables of happy people, so many of them strangers. “I’ve never had a big friend group before.”

Tom sips his Butterbeer, eyes unfocused, and nods. “I should be networking, shouldn’t I…?”

Harry scoffs.

Tom doesn’t do any networking. He just sits by Harry, who leans back and listens to the flow of the conversations around them – Daphne ribbing Justin about his Muggle game, Geoff ranting about the infeasibility of the Chudley Cannon’s current defensive strategy, a heated debate between the Ravenclaws over how best to simulate sunlight with magic.

At some point, Harry starts yawning, lulled by the warmth of the bar and the eddies of conversations he couldn’t care less about. The other Slytherins notice, and Daphne makes their excuses.

“Where to next?” Calcifer asks, sticking his hands in his pockets as the seven Slytherins step back onto the street. “I’ve been looking for a new quill…”

He trails off, looking to Tom. Tom has stopped in the middle of the road, face blank.

Harry stills, looking around. There’s something strange on the air. He can’t quite pinpoint –

There. A low, humming buzz, barely on the edge of hearing. It’s a familiar noise, but not one that he can place.

Choppy. Yes, that’s it – a choppy sort of buzzing. He’s not sure why, but he doesn’t trust the sound. Something is something terribly wrong here.

The ram inside presses against his skin, struggling to break free. It’s stronger, faster than his human body. He’ll be better able to protect Tom in that form.

 _Idiot_ , he admonishes himself, gripping his wand, eyes roving about the street – they’re closest to a shabby used bookstore; the road is emptier now than earlier in the day, but still populated by clusters of fellow Hogwarts students.

The sound has grown loud enough for the others to notice. They pull together, organizing themselves into a defensive formation like James had drilled into them.

Lyra is the first to look up. “Merlin’s dripping testes,” she says, with such uncharacteristic alarm that they all end up just staring at her for a long moment.

She gestures urgently to the sky.

“Bleeding elephant turds,” Calcifer says. “What the _fuck_ are those things?”

“The Muggles,” Tom snarls. “We’ve gotten complacent – god, I’ve been _stupid_ , I should have known they’d strike here…”

Helicopter blades. That was the source of the terrible noise. Harry is struck dumb by it, this invasion of cold technology into an indisputably wizarding space. Three helicopters, descending rapidly, like monstrous black dragonflies. The sound of them is a roar, now, ripping through his very being, the wind of them pulling at his clothing and cropped hair, flattening the monkshood plants to the ground.

There’s screaming. Harry scans the street again, seeing that many of the students in the Three Broomsticks have ventured outside, shielding their eyes against the bright sky, likely drawn by the noise.

The defensive positioning of their group has dissolved into a fearful huddle. Tom’s knuckles are white against the purple shell of his bottle rocket. Justin seems to be crying.

Harry feels frozen. There’s a surrealism to this moment that no amount of war preparation could have eased.

The first of the great black helicopters touches down. Masked Muggles in black padded suits pile out. They hold guns in their hands. Not the kind of shoddy rusted rifles that Uncle Vernon had favored, but big mechanical beasts of weapons.

No one’s _doing_ anything. The others look far too terrified. The seven of them have backed away into an alleyway. Hiding.

A puffing shot from one of the guns, and a student crumples.

Another shot.

Another fall.

There’s something off here – that’s not what a gunshot looks like, sounds like… Harry frowns, trying to cast his mind back to Muggle movies he’d snuck peeks at over Dudley’s mammoth shoulders.

“Form up,” he barks, trying to channel his father. The others snap to, straggling into position. “Those are tranquilizers they’re shooting. They’re looking to capture, not kill. Still, be on your guard. They know about how magic works, and they’ll be ready for our counterattack.”

Calcifer, at his shoulder, turns. “Counterattack?”

“This isn’t class,” Harry says tightly. “Kill and maim at will.”

Another two puffs, from the direction of the Three Broomsticks, then the blitzing snap of spellfire. Students fighting back.

“Move out,” Harry orders, charging.

For a terrifying moment, he’s alone, exposed against the cobbles of the main street, wand blazing with Stunners, watching as the second helicopter lands.

Then Tom’s at his shoulder, face set in cold fear, conjuring a flock of flying snakes that shoot like arrows towards the Muggles.

One of the Muggles drops to the ground, a viper’s teeth in their neck. A new noise, now. A rattling, screaming blast. _This_ is the sound of a gunshot. Machine gun fire, Harry realizes, watching as the bullets rip the rest of Tom’s conjurations to bloody bits.

Harry drops to the ground, pulling Tom bodily down with him. Tom’s shivering badly, his long frame wracked by terror.

But more students are fighting back, now. Most of their spells don’t land, or seem to be absorbed somehow by the clothing of the Muggles. But every so often, a student – usually an upper year – manages to score a hit and take down one of the Muggles.

The ones with the tranquilizers, though, continue shooting with mechanical precision. This isn’t sustainable – and if they get desperate enough to start shooting _people_ with real bullets –

“Cover me,” Tom says, fumbling with the bottle rocket Geoff had thrust upon him.

Harry widens his eyes, throwing up the strongest shield he can muster. “Do you need me to give you a spark to light it?”

“I can muster up a little flame,” Tom snaps, but Harry looks down and sees that his fingers are shivering badly enough that he’s having difficulty.

The third helicopter lands. What do they _want_?

“Got it,” Tom says. “Drop the shield… now!”

The rocket, unleashed, barrels forward, whistling furiously, trailing a line of vibrant orange sparks. It careens off-target, path meandering towards the sky, then abruptly swerves to collide straight into the helicopter’s engine.

Harry slams up a new shield, realizing what’s about to happen a moment before it does: an all-consuming explosion, blossoming up into the white sky.

“Holy hell,” Tom says. He’s grinning, just a bit, looking up at the fireball. “That was almost a disaster.”

“You think? Good thing you’re so supernaturally lucky.”

“It’s called _magic_ , idiots,” Daphne says from behind them. She’s wide-eyed with terror, but her jaw is set in determination as she weaves a web of wind magic – she must have twisted the air around to control the path of the rocket.

“Or that,” Harry says, swallowing a manic laugh. “Nice save, Daph.”

Around them, other students do their best to emulate Tom in launching fireworks at the invaders. Daphne hunkers down under their shield with them, biting her lip with concentration as she continues manipulating the wind currents on the street.

The effect is devastating. Harry beams, still breathing hard, but feeling a bright line of hope spring into being in his chest.

Abruptly, the machine gun fire spikes to a crescendo. Harry ducks closer to the ground, smile dying as he feels his shield shudder under the pressure of a stray bullet. He hears a cry from further down the street; someone’s been hit.

“Tom? What… what do we do?” Harry asks, swallowing the numbness in his throat.

Tom’s silent. His spidery fingers have curled over his ears.

Harry takes inventory of the developing situation. Two of the helicopters are flaming wrecks. Each of the crafts had carried around a dozen Muggles, around ten of whom are incapacitated. This attack was poorly planned; then again, the enemy weren’t expecting their targets to be armed with explosives. Henry’s standing by the entrance to the Three Broomsticks, helping Hermione maintain a powerful shield. He catches Harry’s eye and nods tightly.

Somewhere behind them, someone’s shouting, “please! Don’t shoot!”

Pansy, Calcifer, and Lyra skid down beside them, taking cover behind Harry’s shield. “What’s the plan?” Pansy pants, tucking a wayward lock of hair behind her ear.

Tom’s throat bobs. Another chorus of shots have him flinching, eyes jumping away.

“Henry and the Ravenclaws are over there,” Harry fills in, nodding in their direction. “I think they’ll back us if we charge.”

Calcifer’s eyes widen. “ _Charge_?” he says shrilly. “That sounds like a good way to die! Didn’t you read those pamphlets?”

“Pamphlets?”

“No,” Tom rasps, coming back to himself. “No charging. Our objective needs to be to hold out as long as we can while we wait for help. Lyra, you shield in Harry’s stead; Harry, conjure your Patronus; Daphne, keep the atmospheric work going; Calcifer, we need to –”

“ _Stupefy_ ,” comes a voice from behind them.

On instinct, Harry dodges. Beside him, Pansy falls unconscious. “ _Protego_ ,” Harry incants a moment too late. He stares through the rippling shield and finds his eyes locked with Justin’s, hazel and terrified.

“Justin? What –”

Daphne’s eyes, locked onto the Muggle device in Justin’s hands, narrow. “You _traitor_ ,” she growls.

An explosion rocks them. Blasting curse, Harry thinks. Hopes.

Justin scuttles away.

“Harry, Patronus. Now,” Tom says.

“Right,” Harry says, trying to summon back his battle-calm. “ _Expecto Patronum_.”

The silvery unicorn leaps from his wand, snorting, brandishing its horn like it wants to charge the Muggles.

“Find James Potter,” Tom tells it. “Tell him the Muggles have found Hogsmeade.”

The Patronus dances away.

Lyra’s shield holds strong, but the pockets of other students out on the street are struggling. Here, Harry sees the true purpose behind the guns; they’re not shooting _people_ with them, but using them to shatter shields so they can get tranquilizer darts through. It’s a brutally effective strategy. He suspects their group has held out this long only because they’re so far removed from the heart of the fighting.

Down the street, a Gryffindor yells in shock as her shield fragments. A moment later, her friend crumples to the ground, felled by a tranquilizer to the shoulder.

“I’m going out there,” Harry says, shelling off his outer robes and cracking his knuckles.

“ _No_ ,” Tom says.

But the rhythm of the battlefield has changed; the Muggles are spreading out, widening the perimeter of their control to include pockets of fallen students. They’ve secured the remaining helicopter: preparing for an imminent retreat, Harry is sure.

They’re here for more test subjects. They must have thought this would be an easy target – lots of near-defenseless children, isolated from Hogwarts’s wards. _They’ve underestimated us_ , he tells himself. The Muggles won’t be making it out of this alive. Still – _Justin_. What had he been playing at, Stunning Pansy? What does any of this mean?

Tom’s clutching at his wrist, looking terrified.

“I’m going,” Harry says. “I’ll be okay. You just keep the others safe, all right?”

Tom doesn’t let go. His eyes are bright with terrified tears.

Harry kisses him, impulsively, at the hinge of his jaw. “I’ll be _okay_.”

He tugs himself out of Tom’s grip, sprinting away to a nearby group of third year Hufflepuffs.

Alert, he scuttles down the road. The Muggles seem not to notice him in the chaos.

Four Hogwarts students sprawl across the cobbles, clearly having been hit with tranquilizers. Their remaining two friends shelter behind a wobbly shield charm that flickers every time they hear a gunshot.

Harry puts up a shield of his own to cover them. “Have you tried a _Rennervate_ on any of them?”

One of the two shakes his head wordlessly, biting his lip.

“Would you mind trying that now?” Harry asks, scanning their surroundings. The Muggles have begun gathering unconscious students, piling them into the remaining helicopter.

“It’s not working,” the Hufflepuff says desolately.

“That’s okay,” Harry says. “I have to leave you now. Are you going to be okay?”

The other of the two flinches. “You can’t leave us! They’ll get us, too.”

“I’ve got to make sure they won’t take anyone,” Harry says. “Try your shields again – imagine making them tough as a turtle’s back, so nothing could possibly break them. You were doing well before I came.”

They recast. Their shields are stronger, now.

“Well done,” he says, then dashes away. The professors aren’t going to get here in time, he’s almost certain. He’s been through too much in his life to rely on adults for help when situations escalate to this kind of extreme, anyway.

He’d thought things might be different now – one of those professors is _James_ , after all, who of all people he should be able to trust.

Nothing for it, now. He needs to take out that final helicopter.

He aims Stunners at a pair of Muggles dragging a Slytherin – Melanie Thorngrove, one of his fourth-years – towards the helicopter. They don’t seem to even register the attack – the spells are absorbed into their peculiar bulky black clothing.

Harry curses. He'll need something more powerful than a Stunner, then. _Fuck_.

He crouches down in the middle of the street, throwing up a shield. A dart ricochets off it – they’ve finally noticed him. Yes – a handful of the Muggles watch him through their shining black helmets, marking him out as a threat.

Down the street, Henry’s forces falter. Hermione’s gone down, Harry realizes with a sick chill. He’s not sure if she’d been hit by a dart or a bullet, but he fears the worst – they’ve been more liberal with their fire in the last few minutes.

He grips his wand, trying to temper his heartbeat into something more gentle, hold his breathing to a pace that makes him feel more in control.

There’s a terrible growling noise, then a gust of wind – the blades of the helicopter have started up again.

Harry feels his battle-calm return in a rush.

He lets down his shield and drops into a combat stance, letting the incantation for a Heart-Stopper fall from his lips.

***

“He scares me, sometimes,” Lyra whispers as they watch Harry through the shimmering surface of her shield charm.

Harry’s as elegant in battle as he is on the Quidditch pitch. His wand moves in beautiful swooping motions, firing red curses dripping with darkness, the pebbles under his feet scattering under the force of his power. The sky overhead darkens.

“I hadn’t realized he was so…” Calcifer trails off, face stark and strange in the shifting light.

Tom swallows, pulled to pieces between his fear and pride. Harry _is_ scary, sometimes. Tom often thinks he doesn’t know his own power, but in moments like this, Harry in absolute control, the world bending before his magic – no, right now Harry knows _exactly_ what he’s capable of.

And here Tom is, just watching. _God_. He’s such a coward. He’s never thought of his sense of self-preservation as a bad thing, before. It’s… it’s _healthy_.

A year ago, as they fought in the heart of the dying Forest, Tom had thought he wouldn’t mind dying in battle. That was before his heart had been forcibly stopped, though, before he’d been implanted with something to manually pump his blood. He feels fragile, now, in a way he didn’t during that other battle. He’s not made for fighting the way Harry is.

But this? _Hiding_? – he can’t do this. He can’t watch Harry throw himself into battle while Tom himself cowers behind a shield in an alleyway choked with monkshood.

The realization of it is a blast of clarity amidst the chaos and screaming noise of the street.

Tom is the most powerful student Hogwarts has held since Dumbledore himself. He is _Tom Riddle_ , who will someday be a king amongst wizards. He is sustained by the last remnants of the Forest’s ancient oaks. He is a boy with a unicorn hiding, silvery and sharp, under his skin.

He loves Harry Potter. He loves him more than late nights studying in the library, more than the feeling of breathing life into teapots, or the way sunlight filters through the canopy of the Forest. He loves him more than anything. More than he fears death.

His heartbeat pounds to music only he can hear. “You’ll be okay here?” he hears himself say to Lyra.

She nods, eyes blue and wide.

“Right,” Tom says. He finds himself standing. The icy hand of fear tightens around his wooden chest.

“ _Tom_ ,” Calcifer says. “What are you doing?”

Tom doesn’t answer. He ducks out from behind the shelter of the shield, breathes in the scent of ozone. The tip of his wand shivers, but his casting is smooth, a familiar rhythm. He has trained for this. He’s used to fighting in a way he hadn’t been a year ago, when he’d been felled by Longbottom and the Aurors.

This is a dance. He moves to the phoenix-melody of his wand, breathes in time to a familiar beat hovering at just beyond the cacophony of the helicopter blades and cracking gunfire.

Harry’s summoning a storm.

The chill of it slams down on Tom, harsh and heavy and _beautiful_. The bright white of the sky above has dimmed to a brutal wet gray. Lightning boils in the clouds overhead.

Tom conjures every animal he can think of: zebras and wolves, gigantic spiders and snakes with yellowy eyes like the basilisk.

The wind has picked up, and the Muggles seem to have caught on to the fact that Harry is its source. They’ve trained machine guns on him, and though none of the bullets seem to connect, Tom is dreadfully certain it’s only a matter of time.

He sends the animals to Harry, to separate him from the sights of the monstrous weapons.

Everything has reached a fever pitch of confused horror. The sky above is purple and monstrous. Tom, windblown and terrified, conjures up a shield for shelter, crouching in the windbreak of a storefront. He transfigures little venomous snake after snake, as many as he can before he feels like he’ll wash away from exhaustion. They dart forward with orders to bite Muggles in the ankles; the poison in their fangs is from the monkshood flowers.

The wooly mammoth takes a spray of bullets and crumples, and Tom realizes that in his distraction, Harry’s been left exposed. The Muggles have readied their retreat, but at least three of them still seem intent on killing Harry before they leave.

Tom sees why in the next moment. The roiling purple cauldron of the sky is ripe with lightning. If that energy were loosed on their final helicopter…

Harry’s lost in his summoning, not aware of the danger. Tom’s too far away, now, to help.

The sound of gunfire slams into Tom, ripping the warmth from his bones.

The sky ignites with jaggedy electricity.

The helicopter erupts in flame.

A hawk drops from the sky, its blood spilling onto the stone of the street.

Everything seems to go very still and quiet, as if someone’s put a muffler on the world. Tom finds himself on his feet, moving forwards, naked without a shield. He’s numb to the thud of his footfalls, numb to everything but the cold of the storm and the sensation of his heart contracting into a shivering pinprick.

Harry’s storm has frozen in place. The rain has ceased. The air is thick, hard to move through, but the wind has died.

The three surviving Muggles rush toward the helicopter. _Fools_ , Tom finds himself thinking. His bone-white wand lashes out with precision, and they drop, intestines unspooling like grisly ribbons from their mouths.

His hands aren’t trembling anymore. It’s strange. His body feels like it should be fracturing under the pulsing drum of his alien heart.

“Tom…?” A wet, gasping rendition of his name. The hawk has transformed.

Harry holds another boy in his arms, a boy with black, rain-slicked hair and eyes the color of dewy grass. The bullet hit him in the chest. The wound looks dark under the terrible sky, matted with torn feathers.

Tom forms the boy’s name with his lips, but can’t muster enough breath for words. Everything in his chest is too tight.

He remembers the first manticore attack, and another green-eyed boy bleeding out. Tom had been so young then – he remembers promising himself to learn healing magic.

He’s just as helpless now. He drops to his knees, transfixed by the sight of the dying boy.

“I’m so sorry,” Harry is whispering, on loop. Tom is distantly surprised to recognize his real face, the vicious shade of his eyes cutting through the ink-dark storm.

Harry’s filled out in the years since they’d fallen through time. He looks just like Henry in this moment. The two of them cling together with a clawing desperation.

“I’m so sorry.”

Henry reaches up to touch his double’s face. The disguise pendant is clutched, apparently forgotten, in his hand.

There’s a yell, a patter of confused movement. Tom forces himself to turn his head toward the noise. The adults have finally arrived, wands blazing with uncast spells, eyes wild with terror.

At his side, Henry’s hand falls from Harry’s cheek, slumping onto the wet cobbles.

The rain starts up again, the conjured clouds letting their heavy burden pour down upon their grieving heads. There is no wind.

Someone starts keening, high and lurching. Tom listens for music in the sound. He finds none.

***

Henry is dead. Harry sees it in his glassy eyes, in the sudden limpness of the flesh under his grip, in the cease to the blood pulsing from the hole in his chest.

He doesn’t want to believe it – this world had been safe, once. He’d thought the Muggles weren’t a threat. He’d thought he could protect this family he’d come to love.

It’s hard to see anything in this downpour. Hard to hear anything but the thundering slam of raindrops against cobblestones. The world has been reduced to three entities. Harry himself, skin slick with sweat and blood and storm. Henry’s hollow shell, eyes unblinking against the swollen droplets crashing down to earth. And Tom, kneeling as if in prayer, hands clenched in shivering white fists.

Harry licks his lips and tastes copper and salt. He’s not sure if he’s crying.

Henry stares, endlessly, into the lightening sky. The flat green of his dead eyes is an accusation.

 _I don’t understand… Who are you_?

Kill the spare.

Kill…

The Heart-Stoppers had flowed so easily from his wand. To conjure the storm had been as natural as breathing. If his murders of the Aurors a year ago hadn’t been enough to damn him – if what he’d done to Alice Longbottom hadn’t been worthy of condemnation –

There had been Hogwarts students in that final helicopter. He’s almost sure of it. They couldn’t have survived that blast – but they’d been hardly an afterthought in the midst of his summoning.

When had killing become so easy?

Harry had told himself, in the depths of his despair that last summer, that perhaps it was better to be a killer than to be someone who people would die for. Even two years after his death, Cedric Diggory’s blood is thick on Harry’s hands. Though this new time has revived him, Cedric haunts Harry’s nightmares more even than Neville's mother does.

Once, when they still felt almost like strangers, he’d told Tom that there was nothing to die for in this softer world. It seems he had been wrong.

What had he done to deserve this? To bear the twin burdens of killing and watching those he loves die?

The rain is easing. The clouds have given up all the moisture they have to offer.

Harry finds that he is not, in fact, crying. His insides feel parched, empty as the Mother’s desiccated corpse.

Tom is moving, shifting to his feet. Harry’s eyelids flutter, overwhelmed by the suddenly unfurling world. He remembers that there is an existence beyond this tiny sphere of himself, the cooling flesh of his brother, and Tom’s hunched form.

Tom stands into the now-pale gray sky. Harry holds Henry tighter, trying to ground himself against the vertigo of it. There’s sound in the world again. A breathy, ululating wail from the smoking wreckage of one of the helicopters. A coughing frenzy of laughter further down the street. One of the Muggles gurgling out a sticky last breath.

And over it all, the sound of names, people calling out for their loved ones. This is why Tom has risen. He has stood because he is tall, and easily located. So that Geoff can find him easily through the masses of scared children and frantic adults, and Geoff can hug him, latch onto him, spend another precious moment ignorant to the horror Harry clasps to his chest.

Harry looks away from the two of them, feeling obscurely monstrous. Geoff’s sobbing. Perhaps, then, he has already seen Harry, already realized what Henry’s stillness means. Perhaps he had witnessed the hawk fall from the sky, blood ribboning from it like sticky red ink.

This time, when Harry licks his lips, he tastes the salt of tears.

He can hear his own name, now, in the chorus of the searchers.

“Henry! Geoffrey! Harry! Tom!” a hoarse voice is calling.

Harry curls closer to Henry’s rain-damp corpse, imagining that body heat could be catching. That bullet had plotted a course for _him_ – it should be he, Harry, leaking the last of his warmth into the pavement – James shouldn’t have to see this, shouldn’t have to deal with the death of his eldest child.

A grateful shout. James has spotted them, drawn to the beacon of Tom’s height.

Harry forces himself to look up. James is striding towards them, tugging a very pale Dahlia along in his wake.

James is upon them too quickly, the expression of hope on his face fracturing as his eyes are drawn inexorably to the road, to Harry and the dead boy.

He drops to his knees. Harry holds Henry closer, pulling him away so James can’t see the empty green of his eyes.

“Harry,” James says gently.

Harry shudders. His hands are slick with his brother’s blood.

“It’s okay, little one. I’m here. You’re safe. Just let me see Henry. Let me…” His voice breaks. “It’s going to be _okay_.”

Lies. Harry’s never been safe. This is never going to be okay.

James pries his numb arms away from the body. Harry lets him. He curls, instead, around himself, wraps his bloodied arms around his own torso and tries to fight the blubbering tears.

After a moment, he feels a new, tentative presence at his shoulder. Dahlia, eyes red with sorrow, pressing into his side.

“Don’t blame yourself,” she whispers.


	25. Vigil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Potters grapple with the fallout of the battle.

**Part IV: Flower of his Line**

That June, exams are cancelled. Hogwarts sends them home early “to be with their families while our people come to grips with this terrible tragedy”, as Headmistress McGonagall puts it.

So it is that the Potter children, despite their own terrible tragedy, are left very suddenly alone, without their friends or parents to ground them.

Lily and James Floo the four of them back to the overgrown cottage in the birch wood, then immediately turn around and leave for the Ministry. The two of them are _very_ important personnel, after all, integral to the nascent war effort.

It’s a mess, and Tom is the only of them in any condition to patch things up. Instead, he sits uselessly at the kitchen table, wincing as a flying Geoff pulls out of a steep dive just a few feet above the rose garden.

He’d asked Tom if he’d wanted to come fly Quidditch drills with him. Tom had refused, of course – his heart can’t handle that sort of strain. Still, he’s starting to regret that decision. The recklessness of Geoff’s flight patterns is alarming, and the last thing they need is for him to break his neck.

Dahlia has been sobbing for the last two hours and shows no signs of stopping. Tom never _did_ learn how to deal with tears.

And Harry, who Tom needs most of all, has fallen into a state of sullen shock, vacillating between complete silence and violent outbursts. He left off pacing around the house just a few minutes ago, going up to the living room to sit with Dahlia and the cats.

The sun is dipping towards the horizon. Someone will have to corral everyone into a routine: get Geoff off the broom, bring Dahlia downstairs, force dinner on them both, then send Geoff to sleep in the bedroom that he’d shared with Henry and Dahlia to her own lonely quarters…

Tom sighs. “Rooke.”

The little elf pops in, ears drooping.

“May I… may I help you make dinner?”

She smiles tremulously and nods. They make a simple pasta dish. Children’s fare. It seems appropriate.

Harry and Dahlia come down on their own and pick silently at the meal. Tom has to go out to get Geoff himself.

It’s cold outside. Tom’s not wearing socks. He holds a hand above his head, trying to summon the strength to shout for Geoffrey.

There’s no need. Geoff sees him and hurtles back to earth, cheeks flushed, eyes manic.

“You need to come inside,” Tom says, then bites his lip. “I mean, there’s food. You should eat.”

Geoff stares at him for a long moment. “Oh,” he says.

Tom goes inside. Geoff follows, leaving his broomstick leaning in the doorframe.

It’s a quiet meal. Geoff eats scraps, then mumbles something about going to bed and wanders upstairs. Dahlia follows, leaving a nearly untouched plate.

“You’re not eating,” Harry says, not looking at Tom.

He’s still not wearing his disguise pendant. Tom imagines it’s still locked in Henry’s icy fist, far away in a Ministry morgue. He thinks of a corpse lying on a cold examining table, school robes peeled away to examine the bullet hole in its chest and the feathers embedded deep in the wound.

Geoff hadn’t seemed surprised to see Harry’s real face. Tom wonders if someone had told him; the entire rest of the family had known, after all.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Harry –” Tom squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t know how to deal with this kind of grief.

Harry’s fingers drum a careless beat into the wood of the eight-seater table.

Tom looks away. He feels unsteady, isolated. Despite himself, he can’t look at Harry without seeing Henry’s face. He feels as though the boy sitting across from him is a stranger.

Harry gets up and starts to help Rooke with the washing-up. Tom finds himself rooted to his chair, running his tongue around the contours of his dry mouth.

The sun sets.

Tom forces his limbs to carry him upstairs. He finds Geoff in Dahlia’s room, snoring on the floor. Dahlia is asleep right next to him; they seem to have plundered pillows from all over the house to make a makeshift mattress.

In the room across the hall, Harry is still awake. His eyes pierce the darkness of their room as Tom enters, shutting the door behind him.

Tom swallows, freezing in the doorway. He feels so very small. He’s… he's not used to feeling small. “Are you okay?”

“No.” Harry huffs. Despite everything, the sound of his breathing is a familiar comfort. Tom lets himself move deeper into the room.

“Can I help?”

“Are _you_ okay?”

“I don’t know,” Tom admits, lingering beside Harry’s bed. “I… I don’t think I am.”

A rustling of sheets. He feels the warmth of Harry’s fingers curling around his wrist.

He licks his lips. Harry tugs gently on him, and he lets him pull them down together on the bed, twined together.

“I need you to promise me something,” Harry whispers into the back of Tom’s head. “Promise me you’ll never die for me.”

A laugh dies in Tom’s chest. “I have no intention of dying for _anyone_.”

Harry’s hand finds the bark creeping along the skin above his heart. Tom freezes, hating his own fragility.

“Harry…”

“I – never mind.”

_I don’t think I’m even grieving for Henry_ , Tom wants to tell him. _I’m grieving for you, and for Geoff and Dahlia and Lily and James. In death, he has been reduced to a wound upon the living_. He can’t imagine what Harry would say to that, but it’s _true_ , true in a way that feels like frost in his bloodstream.

Death is the wide blue eyes of a drowned boy, a stain, a bloodied hawk. It is oblivion packed into a beautiful green spell, or birthed from the maw of a gun. It is stalking he and Harry both, and _Tom will not let it have them_.

***

Harry wakes up in the same clothes he had changed into the previous afternoon, now hopelessly rumpled by sleep.

He’s disoriented for a long moment – drowsy, warm, a salty sting to his morning breath. His face, he realizes, is pressed against Tom’s bony chest. He stretches, blinking away the cobwebs of dreams. Sleeping in the same bed with Tom is a new development – oh. That’s funny; the ceiling above him is not the cold stone of the Slytherin dorms –

Reality returns. Harry’s body goes limp. His contented sleepiness flees him.

Tom shifts, pulling Harry tighter to him. Harry finds his cheek pressed uncomfortably against one of Tom’s shirt buttons.

“Tom,” he says, muffled.

Tom shifts again, ribs expanding around an enormous yawn. “G’morning.”

Harry wriggles away from him, ignoring his grunt of loss. “I’m gonna go take a shower.”

No response. Tom lays frozen, holding his right hand above his head and examining the scars there. His face is set with furious intensity.

Harry wants to touch him. He already regrets rising.

He leaves anyway, ducking into his third shower since the battle. He stares down at the knobbly, wide-thumbed hands he’d inherited from Lily, remembering how cleanly Henry’s blood had washed from the lines in his palms.

The blood of deer, of humans, of green-eyed marsh hawks… all the same in the end. All pulled just as simply from the body.

Rooke has already prepared him two plates of eggs and toast. He finds them on the counter under a warming charm.

Tom stumbles down the stairs shortly. He’s changed into fresh clothes, too, but his hopelessly rumpled hair and distant brown eyes betray the state of his mind.

He slumps down at the kitchen table, setting upon the breakfast ravenously. Harry is glad to see his appetite has returned.

A postal owl raps on the kitchen window. It’s carrying a newspaper, Harry realizes with dread.

Tom glares at it over a forkful of eggs. Harry takes it upon himself to fetch the paper, handing over a pair of knuts.

“‘Cowardly Muggle Attack on Hogsmeade Kills Six Hogwarts Students, Injures Fourteen,’” he reads out for Tom’s sake, feeling the pit in his stomach grow. The headline is accompanied by a picture of one of the ruined helicopters, spitting ash up into the roiling cauldron of the sky. “Let’s see… ‘unknown motivation behind the attack’… ‘likely not to be an isolated incident’… ‘Ministry representative confirms the Muggle Prime Minister had no knowledge of the attack’… ‘Statute of Secrecy still in place’…”

“So the Muggle government weren’t the ones behind the attack?” Tom squints into the middle distance, toast forgotten. “I felt certain…”

“This ‘Ministry representative’ could be lying to suppress panic,” Harry says doubtfully, turning the page. There’s a list of deaths there: ‘ _Henry Potter_ ’, ‘ _Melanie Thorngrove_ ’… He flips hurriedly back to the front page, feeling ill.

“That seems shortsighted even for them,” Tom sniffs. “The Ministry seems to prefer obfuscating the truth over telling flat-out lies. How would that kind of statement even help them?”

Harry stares into the picture of the helicopter. “Tom… about Justin.”

Tom’s face darkens. “Yes. I would appreciate your assessment of that… that little situation.”

“He was communicating with them through that device. I realized too late – all those buttons were arranged like a tiny keyboard.”

“‘Keyboard’?”

“It’s a thing you attach to a computer so you can type out words.”

Tom blinks rapidly. “Type? Like on a typewriter?”

“Exactly. Sorry, Tom, I forget that you’re not of this time.”

“ _Most_ wizards wouldn’t know whatever you were gibbering about.”

“You’re probably right.” Harry sets the paper down on the counter and sits back down.

“So… you think he was writing messages into that contraption? What would that accomplish?”

“The device could probably transmit those messages across a distance to the Muggles.”

“Ah,” Tom nods sagely. “Like a telegram.”

“Uh. Actually, yeah.”

“And he used it to signal to them that yesterday would have been a good time to strike – a large quantity of ‘defenseless’ schoolchildren, outside of the usual protection of the Hogwarts wards. It would have been ideal, had they not underestimated our magical prowess.” A hint of Tom’s usual smugness ghosts about the corners of his mouth.

Harry scoffs. “You mean that it would’ve been ideal if Fred and George Weasley hadn’t _just_ developed a new line of fireworks.”

“Yes, well.” Tom pokes at his eggs. “I suppose I do… anyway, in the case of Justin, we find ourselves once again missing –”

“Yeah. Missing a motive,” Harry says. “I don’t know if that’s completely true, though. Didn’t Justin say –”

“Oh! His mother is the executive of a research company.”

“ _Exactly_.”

Tom’s leg spasms with nervous energy. “An independent Muggle company, kidnapping wizards… do you think the Ministry has put it together yet?”

“I… probably?”

“Do you know if Lily and James ever came back home? We should tell them.” Tom rises from his chair, already making for the stairs.

Hurriedly, Harry moves to follow.

Before he can, there’s a great bang from another room. Lily and James’s voices, low and intent, ring out from behind a wall.

Harry steps forward gratefully. The adults, though they’d been useless on the battlefield, might be able to soothe the grief permeating the house.

Before he can get far, Tom grabs his sleeve, shaking his head. He’s heard the voices, too, and has stopped on the landing of the stairs, crouched down with his ear pressed against the wall.

Harry opens his mouth. Tom touches a long finger to his lips, widening his eyes meaningfully.

Settling next to Tom, Harry hears the reason for his wariness: Snape’s unmistakable drawl, too muffled to make out words.

They exchange a look. Harry makes a shooing motion.

Tom rolls his eyes.

Harry repeats the gesture, and Tom reluctantly drags himself away from the section of the wall and upstairs to the living room.

“They must have spent all night working,” Harry whispers, perching on the arm of his favorite sofa. “Do you think they’ve had any time to process… you know?”

“ _We_ haven’t even had time to process it.”

The voices downstairs shift. “Shit. Tom, I think they’re coming up here.”

“So?”

“I don’t want to deal with Snape.”

“You never do. Suck it up.”

“Would you be mad if I went back up to our room and just let you –”

“ _Yes_ , I’d be mad – sit _down_ , you ridiculous lump –”

Lily’s bright head crests the threshold to the stairs. “I agree it’s worrying, Severus, of course, but don’t you think we all – oh, Harry! Tom! Good morning. You two are up early, huh?”

Harry blinks owlishly back at her. He feels stiff with the certainty that they had just been talking about _him_.

“Good morning,” says Tom, voice too smooth, clearly having come to the same conclusion.

The adults come fully into the room. James lowers himself into an armchair. He looks like he’s aged a decade overnight, between the bags under his eyes and the mournful frown etched into his mouth. Snape and Lily don’t look much better; Lily’s eyes are a puffy red counterpoint to her pale skin. It’s too easy to imagine her sitting in front of a table of calculations and clinking silver instruments at the Ministry, annotating her work through a steady drip of tears.

Harry feels the cracks in his heart widen. Once, Lily had not hesitated to give her life for her son. In this timeline, she hadn’t even been given the chance – no, that duty had fallen to Henry. Why was _Harry_ never the one given the opportunity to die for his family? Things would be so much easier if he could make that sort of choice, if he could play some part other than _survivor_.

Tom would be furious if he knew thoughts like this were haunting him.

The silence in the room echoes.

“Justin Finch-Fletchley,” Tom says sharply. “He’s the key.”

The adults look up: Lily and James confused, Snape suspicious.

“He went missing,” says Snape, eyes narrowing. “Are you saying you know what happened to him?”

“Not exactly,” Tom says cautiously. “He was with us before he disappeared, though.”

“Oh, _was_ he now?” Snape’s face is contorted with a terribly familiar scorn.

“He Stunned Pansy and ran off,” Harry interrupts impatiently. “We think he was communicating somehow with the Muggles.”

Lily frowns. “Why would you say that? Is this kid Muggleborn?”

“Yes – but that’s beside the point; he had a device that we think could transmit signals –”

“This is a very serious accusation, Harry. Your generation has access to so many strange Muggle things, and this boy’s blood status shouldn’t muddy your perception of the situation. Tom, you of all people should understand that Muggle heritage does not equate to split loyalties –”

“Lily, love, he Stunned another student,” James says gently. “I know things are – _strained_ right now, but I don’t think we should discount Harry and Tom’s testimony. They wouldn’t say something like this lightly.”

Harry’s fingernails bite into his palms. Did Lily honestly think they were capable of that sort of blood purist rhetoric?

“The Ministry should look into his family history,” says Tom intently. “You still don’t know what the organization behind the attack was, right?”

“We know enough that we don’t need to be operating based on tips from schoolchildren,” Snape growls.

Tom’s jaw tenses dangerously.

“Especially schoolchildren who seem to have no moral opposition to performing explicitly illegal Dark spells,” Snape continues. “Heart-Stoppers? Entrails-Expelling curses? Those are restricted for use even in healings. Where, I wonder, would two Hogwarts students have learned such things?”

“Severus, they’re just kids – they didn’t know what they were doing,” James says weakly.

“Riddle is of age. They knew _exactly_ what they were doing. They’ve been pulling stunts like this for over a year now! You’ve been following the Longbottom case more closely even than I have – if you would just _open your eyes_ , you would know they’re hardly innocents. These are only the latest in a string of Dark crimes.”

Lily looks up, eyes narrowing.

Snape begins to pace, spittingly furious. “Riddle had me fooled, too. But do you know what I saw when I walked into Alice’s classroom a year ago? I found Alice on the ground, tied up, not a memory left in her skull, your _precious_ Mister Riddle pointing his wand at her.”

Tom goes still, eyes alight.

“The child’s demented. I am sick of standing by and saying nothing as you continue to shelter him in your home.”

Lily buries her head in her hands. James’s gaze bounces around the room, helpless.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tom says. His voice has crept up a full octave.

Numbness settles upon Harry once again. He should say something – Tom hasn’t done _half_ the things they’re accusing him of. Harry himself is just as culpable.

“Harry?” Though Lily’s voice is unsteady, her eyes are dry and sharp. “Is this true?”

He swallows shakily.

“Harry had nothing to do with any of it.” Tom stands. The pitch of his voice is back under control now, but his hands still tremble. Harry squashes the urge to hold them.

“Tom…” James looks exhausted. “What are you saying?”

“ _Hell_ ,” Lily says, pushing hair out of her eyes. “We told Albus we’d set you on the right path, Tom. I was convinced we were keeping that promise, but this whole time I’ve been mistaken, haven’t I?”

Harry rises, giving in to the desire to press Tom’s shaking hands between his palms. “He’s not a bad person. He – it wasn’t all an act.”

“ _Let go_ ,” Tom hisses quietly. “ _Harry, please. Play along. For once in your life, I need you to lie._ ”

The blood drains from the three adults’ faces as they register the Parseltongue.

Harry lets go.

“I called you my son,” says James hollowly. “I – Tom, I don’t want to lose two children today.”

“We’re too late, James. He was never what we thought he was.” Lily’s face is set with a desperate anger that Harry recognizes as a mirror for the storm gathering in his own belly.

Tom cocks his head to the side. His hands, clasped behind his back, still. “I’ll be leaving, then. My apologies for the… _inconvenience_ of having to shelter me.” Harry can’t see his face, but he hears the sneer in his voice. “ _Accio_ _Floo powder_.”

The little pot of Floo powder from the receiving room downstairs comes whizzing into Tom’s grasp, powder streaking in its wake. The living room fireplace was made for warmth, not transit – still, Tom somehow manages to make his contortion to fit inside seem graceful.

“12 Grimmauld Place,” he intones, voice muffled by stone.

The ashes of a long-dead fire ignite with sparks the color of Henry’s eyes, and Tom vanishes.

From Harry’s side comes a horrible choking noise. He turns to see James, pinching the bridge of his nose against a flood of fresh tears. Lily puts an arm around him, mouth pursed.

For a terrible moment, Harry looks into his mother’s face and sees Aunt Petunia, sees that they share the bony edge to their jaws, the same angular eyebrows.

“I’ll be going, then,” Snape says. “I apologize for the way that transpired. It was not my intention to… to lose the child.”

“Then what _was_ your intention, Severus?” James snaps. “What was the point of any of this?”

Harry shrinks back into the sofa cushions, feeling tears batter at the corners of his eyes.

“Severus,” Lily says firmly. “Go. We need to get some rest. James –”

James straightens his back, steel bleeding back into his hazel eyes. “Harry… why didn’t you tell us about…”

The ice in Harry’s veins congeals. He hates lying. He always has.

But he’s not the person he used to be.

“He was so kind to me.” His voice sounds like a dead thing, the limp body of a fish drifting to the surface of the Black Lake. “He made me feel worthy. And… I was scared of him. So I helped him cover it all up.”

“Oh, little one –” Lily reaches out for him, suddenly gentle. Harry flinches away.

He blinks and the two of them have left.

Outside, the sun rises on a clear, beautiful day.

And just like that, Tom is gone.

***

The reality of Tom’s absence doesn’t fully sink in until Geoffrey and Dahlia shuffle down, hours later, looking for breakfast.

“Good morning, Harry,” Geoff says, bleary-eyed. “Where’s Tom?”

Harry, still pressed into the sofa, just shakes his head mutely. He has no words left in him.

That afternoon, Harry pens a letter to 12 Grimmauld Place.

He spends an hour discarding drafts and finally settles on a terse, ‘ _Are you okay? -H_ ’. Death Star blinks enormous eyes at the letter, bobbing her head in excitement as he straps it to her leg.

“Take it to Tom, alright, girl?”

The owl hoots in soft understanding. She departs in a flurry of warm air and musty bird scent, winging away into the flawless blue of the summer sky.

Tom’s response doesn’t come back until the next day, but it’s hardly satisfactory – ‘ _I’m fine. The Blacks have been very accommodating. Take care of Geoffrey_.’

Harry traces the elegant, swooping lines of his handwriting with a finger. He feels forsaken.

Briefly, he entertains the notion of following Tom through the fireplace, emerging ash-streaked and rumpled in the Black household. He can’t bring himself to, though. It would, he thinks, hurt James.

_Take care of Geoffrey_. A difficult task, now. Geoff’s grief has morphed into a self-destructive thing: not eating, probably not sleeping, trying out progressively more dangerous stunts on his broom. With Lily and James out of the house most hours, it falls on Harry and Rooke to deal with him. Their best efforts are all for naught, though; Geoff had only ever answered to Henry and Tom. In their absence, he’s an unrestrained wreck.

The days unspool through Harry’s fingers like spider silk, in sticky uneven clumps.

That summer is a hot, dry beast that pulls the scent of the rose bushes into the air. Harry feels strangled by the heat. He’s horribly reminded of the drought that had stricken the Forest in the wake of the Mother’s undoing.

He spends most of his time in the room that he’d once shared with Tom, paging through old schoolbooks. Every so often, he’ll come across a shimmering white horse hair folded into the pages, or a note in the margin, etched in dark purple ink.

‘ _Review this section for the test_ ,’ says an elegant little notation on page 203 of his fifth year Dark Studies textbook. ‘ _You’re rubbish at differentiating Mendelian artifacts from standard enchantments._ ’

The manticore section of his Care of Magical Creatures textbook is a filled with underlined sections and circled headings, in both purple and black ink. Harry finds a sketch of a fanged sheep on the next page, spreading its wings in greeting. When had he drawn it? He can’t quite remember, but he knows Tom was there when he had.

‘ _Have you ever wondered how unicorn reproduction works?_ ’ is scrawled on a piece of Transfiguration notes in messy black ink.

‘ _We’ve talked about this, Harry. No passing notes in class. Pay attention to Lupin_.’

A drop of ink spreads on the paper under the note, as if a quill sat poised thoughtfully over the parchment for a moment too long.

‘ _Unicorn husbandry is actually quite the fascinating discipline. It’s well-studied, but very poorly understood. You see, there’s a correlation between the size of a forest and the size of its herd – that’s well-established. Foals are very difficult to study given the protectiveness of the parents. There’s this strange phenomenon magizoologists have noticed: foals have only ever been observed at an fixed state of development (appearing 2 months old in horse terms, I think? Don’t cite me on that). Some researchers are convinced they’re projections, not real animals –_ ’ The writing cuts off abruptly.

‘ _Ha! Caught red-handed! Lupin looks so disappointed!_ ’

‘ _This is all your fault, ~~Po~~ Partridge._’

Harry misses Tom in a way he’s never missed anyone before. He feels more profoundly alone than he did even in the depths of his childhood, playing with spiders in the cupboard under the stairs.

Plants germinated in darkness grow strangely. They become long and white and coiling, stretching away from the sun. Tom reminds him of those plants, the heights to which they would grow before finally burning through the nutrients packed into their seeds and shriveling away.

Perhaps that’s what Voldemort was: the husk of a beautiful boy stretching out into the darkness.

Harry turns these thoughts over in his head aimlessly, searching for meaning. The scar on his forehead aches dully, less like pain and more like an absence of sensation.

Like Tom, Harry had been grown in the darkness. But he shows few of the same symptoms.

He inks the shape of the scars on his right hand onto parchment, like he’s mapping the neighborhood where he grew up. Until the end of July, he’s not allowed to use magic; he pins the drawings up on the wall with rose thorns stripped from the garden.

Harry lived a childhood without sunlight, but he hadn’t grown up warped. There’s meaning in that, in the hollow throbbing of his old scar, in the way his chest hurts when he finds a new sample of Tom’s handwriting.

When he’d been tiny, in the years before his accidental magic had gotten bad, he’d given names to the spiders living in the shadowy corners of the cupboard under the stairs. Always, _always_ , he’d had one named Tom.

He wishes he were still friends with Hermione. He wishes Tom’s letters had substance to them, wishes he could find a way to write this all down. There’s a reason behind it all – pea plants and sunlight and this new pain in his scar. Harry’s missing a piece. He has to be.

‘ _I love you_ ,’ he writes to Tom. It feels wrong. He wishes he were seventeen, so he could incinerate the words with a spell. ‘ _Lily and James still working fourteen-hour shifts_ ,’ he writes instead. ‘ _Geoffrey broke into the wine cellar (didn’t know the Potters even had one of those) but Rooke stopped him from drinking more than a couple of sips. He told me he’s had alcohol before. Had to give him a talk about drinking alone v. drinking socially. Don’t think he paid much attention._ ’

It’s horribly distant. All of their communications have been. Death Star takes the message with her usual unhinged glee, leaving Harry lying alone on his bed, thinking of unicorn teeth and the texture of moss.

He blames the Prophet’s article for some of the awkwardness. Tom had made good on his threat to Snape, and gone to Rita Skeeter, of all people, with the Potter’s family drama. Dahlia will be going back to school with the specter of her true parentage hanging over her.

Harry hadn’t been there to see Lily and James’s reactions to the article – they’d had the news broken to them at work. They seem to spend all their time at work these days.

They’d come home drawn and jumpy, and foregone dinner in favor of having a ‘serious talk’ with Geoffrey and Dahlia – the younger two hadn't seen the news. Harry had buried that morning’s _Prophet_ out in the yard, terrified of having to be the one to give the others that same ‘serious talk’.

From that point on, the silences whenever anyone mentioned Tom’s name grow more profound. The overgrown cottage in the woods stops feeling like home at all.

***

Henry’s birthday descends in an unspoken cloud of misery.

Harry wakes up that morning feeling detached and irritable, and decides to spend that excess energy in the kitchen. The act of making something with his hands settles him, at least; he bakes cookies and tries not to think about his pumpkin bread recipe.

It’s as he’s standing on the counter, digging around in the cupboard for nutmeg, when the banging of the Floo rings through the morning still of the household.

“Hello?” Harry calls, wary, touching the wand in his back pocket for comfort.

It’s his birthday too, after all. He should have just Summoned the nutmeg. In another world – a _better_ world – today would be a time for celebration, for reveling in his new magical freedom at Henry’s side.

To his surprise, Draco Malfoy shuffles into the kitchen, pushing limp blond hair out of his eyes, clothes streaked with ash.

Harry hops down from the counter, on guard.

Malfoy wheezes in shock, staring at him like he’s a ghost. Self-conscious, Harry touches the spot on his chest where the disguise pendant had once hung.

“ _Henry_ ,” Malfoy breathes, stepping forward. “Thank the stars – they told me you were dead. Everyone said it. But there wasn’t a funeral – I should have known it was a trick, should have thought to come see you –”

“I’m not Henry,” Harry says. “Malf – _Draco_. What are you doing here?”

“It’s your birthday. I needed to – I couldn’t stand just sitting at home, trying to… I tried to send you a letter, but Reginald wouldn’t deliver it.”

“I’m not Henry,” says Harry again.

Malfoy steps closer still. His eyes are a mist-bright shade of blue-gray, like the wispy fringes of a cloud at sunrise. The color of them is striking against the puffy red of his face.

“I’m _Harry_. Draco, I can’t – I’m not who you’re looking for.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” he hisses, so close now that his breath puffs against Harry’s face. “I don’t fucking care. Let me pretend.”

Harry steps backwards into the counter.

Malfoy blinks out a thick tear.

“Do you, er. D’you want to help me bake some cookies?”

“I’d like that.”

Warily, Harry hands him a bowl and a measuring cup.

“What am I meant to do with –”

“Just – just hold them, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” Malfoy shuffles awkwardly. “I’ve never baked before.”

Harry stares out at the ingredients he’s assembled. “ _Accio nutmeg_ ,” he says.

“Should I… stir something?”

“I –” Harry glares down at the nutmeg. “Malfoy, I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“You never _have_ liked me, have you?” Malfoy says, his posh voice tight and miserable. “It didn’t bother me all that much before. But it hurts to see – to see it in his face. Who even _are_ you?”

“I’m Harry Potter,” Harry growls.

“Henry used to go by ‘Harry’,” Malfoy stares down into the mixing bowl.

“I know he did.”

“And you have his face.”

“Yes.”

Malfoy claws a hand through his hair, further mussing it. “I don’t _understand_.”

“I – let’s go for a walk, okay?”

“A _walk_?”

“Let’s just get some fresh air. That or you can leave.”

“I don’t want to leave.”

“Walk with me.”

Malfoy follows him out into the front door. “I forgot shoes.”

Indeed, his feet are naked but for a pair of white wool socks. Harry turns his face up to the taunting cerulean sky, hissing out an exasperated breath. “Would you… would you like to borrow a pair?”

Malfoy squints at Harry. He looks terrible in the sunlight. It’s been two years, now, since Harry first met this version of him – he remembers not recognizing him at first, being shocked by the joy written into his mouth and the grass stains on his clothing.

“What do you want from me?”

“I don’t know anymore,” Malfoy says. “What does any of this matter, anyway?”

James had said something similar.

“We need to hold his funeral,” Harry says. “Give everyone some closure. Lily and James haven’t been in the house hardly at all, and they’re reluctant to hold a ceremony without the, er. The cadaver. The Ministry hasn’t released the victims to their families yet.”

Harry steps back as Malfoy, biting his lower lip bitterly, strides past him into the yard, stripping off his socks.

“You’re sure you don’t want to borrow –”

“No, Hen – whoever you are. Are we going to walk or not?”

Harry closes the door and falls in behind him. Malfoy seems intent on wandering through the rose garden.

“Henry always loved the roses.” Malfoy pauses to admire a deep red rose going to seed. “Personally, I’ve never been one for gardening.”

“Ah,” Harry says awkwardly. This entire conversation was a terrible idea.

“Didn’t mean he was any good at Herbology. That was our biggest weakness, the three of us. Me and Hermione and Henry. Did you know that?”

“Er.”

“Of course you did. It was _your_ boyfriend that eviscerated our point gain every Herbology class.”

Harry pulls a thorn off the stem of a summer-dry rosebush, imagining that it came from a briar deep in the woods.

“What did Riddle even do to get himself kicked out? There are all sorts of rumors flying around – not that he’s bothered to counter them.” Malfoy glances at him, clearly fishing for a reaction. Harry feels the barb of the thorn sink into his palm. “I saw him just last weekend, you know. He’s doing quite well for himself with the Blacks.”

“Tom’s very adaptable,” Harry says neutrally, feeling the hollow pit in his chest yawn wider.

Malfoy pulls himself to his full height, sneering in a way that’s almost nostalgic. It is utterly surreal to stand here, alone in his parent’s garden, and face the ruin of a boy he never stopped hating.

Harry tilts his chin up in challenge. He could hex the living daylights out of Malfoy and the Trace would never pick it up – it would just be a question of hiding the body –

“You’re really fucked up, aren’t you, Potter? You get this _look_ in your eyes sometimes. Hermione always said you gave her a bad feeling, but I never understood quite what she meant. Tom, sure – not that I don’t _like_ him, but. Well, you know him better than anyone. Riddle would tear someone’s eyeballs from their skulls if he felt like he had reason to, wouldn’t he? And _you wouldn’t stop him_.”

Despite himself, Harry laughs. It doesn’t sound like a laugh at all. “Wow, Malfoy, you’ve got us all figured out, _haven’t_ you. God, _eyeballs_? You can be more creative than that, surely.”

“Why did Lily and James kick him out?”

“He kicked _himself_ out.”

“Then _why did he leave you behind_?” Malfoy spits with the gleeful cruelty Harry remembers from another lifetime.

“Fine, Malfoy. You’re right. Tom’s a sick motherfucker. He always has been. And I’m just as bad.” There’s catharsis in the words, even if they don’t ring true. “Happy?”

Malfoy licks his lips. They’re standing very close to each other. “You know, right now you don’t look like him at all. Henry was so expressive. You – you’re not. It’s _creepy_.”

“What do you _want_ from me, Malfoy?”

“I want him back.”

A laugh more horrible even than the last one rips its way from Harry’s lungs.

Malfoy’s eyes are colored like the rusty bottoms of pewter cauldrons. They pour thick, ugly tears onto his cheeks.

And then Harry can taste him. His hand tangles in Malfoy’s hair with a familiarity learned from hours of kissing Tom.

Malfoy is rough and hungry and desperate. It’s a bad kiss, Harry’s limited experience informs him. He can’t bring himself to care. He doesn’t _want_ this to be a good kiss. He wants this to be a collision, a pain, a distraction from the battlefield of his mind.

The ten points of Malfoy’s fingers touch at his jaw and the hollows under his eyes. Harry thinks they might leave bruises. He leans into the contact, so hard that their teeth clack together.

“Shit,” gasps Malfoy.

Harry’s heart gallops under his skin. He feels Malfoy’s pulse shuddering at his neck, the heave of his chest.

Harry tilts his head back, stretches up to take Malfoy’s bloodied lip between his teeth.

Malfoy’s crying. His hands move to tangle in Harry’s mess of hair, gentle now, massaging the sensitive skin of his scalp.

And then it’s too much, and Harry’s pushing Malfoy away, glaring up into his pink, exhausted face.

“Hen –”

“What do you _want_?”

“Let me pretend.”

“Fuck that. You’ve always been so goddamn childish, Malfoy.”

“You weren’t acting like it bothered you a second ago.” His eyes keep wandering down to Harry’s lips. Harry sucks on them, self-conscious.

Tom had kissed Malfoy too, once. What was it that he had said? _You can’t blame me too much. You can see as well as I can how good-looking he is – if you had the chance to kiss him, you would_.

He really _isn’t_ good-looking, especially now. Harry himself probably looks even worse.

The windows of the house loom over them like an accusation, reflecting the shifting edges of the birch wood.

Malfoy leans in again.

“No.” Harry pushes him back, feeling a static shock of magic spark between them. “This is stupid.”

“It’s supposed to be, you bastard.”

“You need to leave. I’m – I’m _sorry for your loss_ , but you can’t be here any longer.”

“I just – I want him back. Please.”

“No magic can reverse death, Draco. He died in my arms. He’s _gone_.”

Malfoy’s face contorts, wrinkling in a vain attempt to hold in the tears still leaking from his gummy eyes.

“I’ll walk you to the Floo.”

“Fuck off.”

Harry takes him by the hand, and despite his initial reluctance Malfoy follows him obediently into the house.

The Floo receiving room is shadowy and cold, the high fireplace unlit. Malfoy stares into the grate in frozen dread. Harry has to physically nudge him forward before he finally takes a pinch of Floo powder and stands in the fireplace, throat bobbing.

“If you see Tom,” Harry says impulsively. “Tell him – tell him I… I’m thinking of him.”

Malfoy grins crookedly. “I will. Look, Potter – _Harry_. I’m sorry. This was a mistake.”

“I don’t think any of us know how to grieve properly,” Harry admits. “I don’t blame you. Not really.”

“Is there a ‘proper’ way to grieve?”

Harry snorts. “If there is, I’d be the last person to know it.”

“You’re really lonely, aren’t you, Harry?”

“Weren’t you just about to leave?”

“It’s just – I’ve lost people before. I may be dealing… poorly with this. But I do know grieving shouldn’t be a lonely process.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

Malfoy – _Draco_ purses his lips, shaking white-gold hair out of his eyes. “I honestly don’t know _why_ I’m here. I have my family to take care of me. I… I kind of thought you did, too.”

“Lily and James are essential to the war effort.”

“Talk to one of your friends, then. You have those, right?”

Harry scoffs. “For all you know, I’ve been spending every Tuesday afternoon at the Weasley house.”

“You’re not even that close with Ron.”

It’s an ugly truth. The Ron of this timeline has dozens of closer friends; he seems to like Harry fine, but Harry isn’t sure he ever graduated beyond friend-of-a-childhood-friend status in his eyes.

“Do you –” Draco shuffles uncomfortably. “Do you want to talk about it with me?”

“No. Thank you, but – please leave.”

“Very well.” Draco messes with his hair, straightening out of his slump to offer Harry a formal nod. “I’ll tell Tom. Take care of yourself, Harry. Even if you are a creepy bastard, you don’t deserve to go through this alone.”

“Right,” Harry says, swallowing around a lump in his throat. “Likewise. Draco.”

“Malfoy Manor,” Draco says solemnly, and lets the viridian flames of the Floo whisk him away.

All the energy animating Harry’s bones suddenly puffs away, and he collapses onto the sofa next to the fire.

He’s not sure how long he waits there, arguing with himself over whether or not to turn on the lamp in the corner, before the grate ignites once more.

He jumps, steeling himself to have to speak with someone – but the thing that comes rolling out of the flames is not a person.

It’s a melon, sloshing and weighty, handsomely green, bigger than Harry’s head.

Harry stares at it for a long time, half-convinced it’s going to sprout legs or something and start doing a little jig. But no – it’s just a watermelon. A birthday present from Tom, almost certainly, a playful reference to their old jokes about the pureblood melon allergy. He’s not sure whether to feel flattered or aghast the strangeness of the offering.

He picks the watermelon up and holds it in his lap, at a loss for whatever else to do.

Well. He could eat it.

Harry forces himself to his feet. He leaves the melon in the kitchen, glossy in the slanting beams of midmorning sunlight.

Then he ventures upstairs and comes to stand in front of the room that Dahlia and Geoff now share.

Almost a full minute after his knock, the door cracks open to reveal a yawning Dahlia.

“Good morning, Harry,” she says.

“Dahlia. I – how did you sleep?”

“Well enough.” She scowls up at him. “What do you care, anyway?”

“What? Dahl, of course I care. You’re my sister.”

She huffs.

Harry’s heart feels like it’s calcifying. “I’m so sorry, Dahl. I was wrong. I thought… I told myself that mourning was a solitary experience.”

“You _blamed yourself_. I told you before – it wasn’t your fault.”

“If it weren’t for me –”

She pinches the bridge of her nose. He’s almost certain she’d picked up that habit from Tom. “You’re ridiculous. Are you going to share that watermelon or not?”

“You really are a Seer, aren’t you?”

Her tongue peeks through her lips in a hint of her old childish humor. “ _May_ be.”

“Should we wake Geoff?”

“He’s allergic,” Dahlia says, taking his hand. Her grip is familiar and sticky, warm with sleep.

“Right,” Harry hesitates. He takes a deep breath, looking straight into her liquid black eyes. “Dahl, I’m so sorry. You’ve needed me, and I’ve not been there for you. I promise to do better in the future.”

She stretches up on her tiptoes to pat him on the head. “I forgive you, Harry. You’re a good person.”

“I’m not so sure I am anymore, Dahlia.” He wants to confess so much to her: all the boys he shouldn’t have kissed, the spells he shouldn’t have cast, the corpses that would still be breathing if he’d never found himself in this time.

“You are,” she says simply. “Now, are you going to get me that watermelon?”

“Sure thing, m’lady,” he sighs, following as she drags him by the hand down to the ground floor.

Dahlia smiles. “Happy birthday, Harry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it makes you feel any better, this is pretty much the low point of the story. Next chapter is also fairly grim, but it's also _fun_ in a way this one isn't.


	26. Tom Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (yeah the title is an atla reference. couldn't help myself.)
> 
> Tom and Calcifer attend a ball, do some research, and go on a fieldtrip.

“Where have you been hiding away, then?” asks a witch with long black hair – an older cousin of Lyra’s, Tom thinks. “Two years in this time, and we’re only meeting you now? It’s a crime, dear.”

“The Potter family fostered him,” Calcifer says smoothly. “All the magic equality laws in the world couldn’t get _their lot_ to deign to attend an event like this.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten you’d fallen in with the Potters. You’ll know _all_ about their little tragedy, won’t you?”

Tom smiles enigmatically, watching the untouched wine in his hand swish in a slurry of dilute red. Dancing couples swirl through the center of the room, moving in beautifully imperfect synchrony.

Calcifer laughs. “Rosie, Tom _orchestrated_ that entire disaster.”

“ _Did_ he now?”

Tom pretends to sip his drink. “Let’s just say I have friends at the _Prophet_.”

Rosie seems suitably impressed. “Calcifer, dear, you said the both of you are seventeen?”

“Yes,” Calcifer says, smirking. “I take it you’re alluding to our potential participation in a certain… ah, upcoming competition?”

“Will either of you be throwing your metaphorical hats into the ring?”

Calcifer exchanges a meaningful glance with Tom. “We just might,” says Tom breezily.

Rosie lifts her glass to them both. “In that case, best of luck to you both.”

“Thank you, Rosie,” Calcifer says. “It was lovely to speak with you.”

Tom offers her an indulgent smile over his shoulder as Calcifer guides him away into the crowd.

“Suddenly I feel less pleased with Father letting us in on that particular state secret,” Calcifer murmurs. “It seems everyone here knows what’s coming next year.”

“The Triwizard Tournament is too big an event. It couldn’t have stayed under wraps for long,” Tom says. “It makes for such excellent gossip – just one leak, and the rumors spread like wildfire.” He licks his lips at the thought. Whoever is crowned as the first Triwizard Champion in a century will be renowned for years to come. Fortuitous indeed that the event be held in the year after his seventeenth birthday.

He’s vaguely amused at the age restriction – back in his day, adults wouldn’t have batted an eye at the thought of sending a minor into battle. Even in the modern era, no Hogwarts student is a stranger to death and injury. Half the school had been in Hogsmeade for the battle that June, after all.

The ballroom at Grimmauld Place is packed with members of Dark families and those in their favor, moving in a complex orbit. This is his third ball of the summer – Tom feels like a show pony, the way Calcifer’s been parading him around. Still, he’s always been good at networking: after a handful of rapid-fire conversations and flashes of orphaned-prodigy charm, he fancies he can get just about any pureblood wrapped around his little finger.

Before long, the orbits in this room will shift around Tom himself. He was meant to be more than a distant exoplanet. Already, the eyes of the pureblooded crowd rest heavy on his back, their whispers massaging his ears with refined curiosity.

He remembers balls from the forties. He’d assumed they were extinct in this new age of Muggle arcade machines and Dark Studies classrooms, but they are still an important part of wizarding life. _Dark_ wizarding life, that is – as Calcifer said, these balls aren’t something the Potters would dream of attending.

Floor-to-ceiling windows, crystal chandeliers, fine dress robes: yes, this is the world Tom was born to rule. He has never needed sunlight or the scent of clipped grass. Here, surrounded by Slytherins – this is his legacy.

Orion Black, across the room, catches his eye and raises his glass in tribute. The older woman with whom he converses offers Tom a respectful nod.

Calcifer follows his glance. “Lady Snyde. She controls most of the trade between magical Britain and Japan.”

Tom returns the distant witch’s nod with a smile. “Interesting.”

“Grandfather told me where the Dark Mantle is,” Calcifer says, lowering his voice and glancing around. “You already know, don’t you?”

“I do,” Tom says. “Closer to home than expected, yes?”

“And aging,” says Calcifer. “It will likely, ah… _pass on_ … within the decade.”

Tom takes a little real sip of wine, holding the sharp tang of it on his tongue. The weight of destiny burning its way down his spine feels, suddenly, like a burden.

“Oh, when did Draco arrive?” Calcifer points to the dance floor, where Draco’s singularly bright hair shines like a bobbing beacon. Lyra, in his arms, twirls with an inborn grace.

“Weren’t those two engaged?” Tom remarks, catching Lyra’s eye and raising a brow in silent question.

“Yes,” Calcifer grumbles. “She thinks that now Potter’s out of the way, Draco’s on the market.”

“But he’s still gay.”

“Lyra doesn’t care. She has this vision of the future from when we were kids, and she doesn’t know how to let that kind of thing go. Draco had a certain role in her vision… I don’t think she’d hesitate in trying to, ah, shove a square peg into a round hole, if you get my drift.”

Tom winces, taking a larger sip of his wine. “I should rescue him, then?”

“No one’s actually going to let her marry him,” Calcifer says dismissively. “Lyra just likes her make-believe.”

But Draco has spotted the two of them standing against the wall, and has sent Tom a pleading glance over Lyra’s dark, curling head.

Tom hands his drink over to Calcifer, grimacing. “I’ll deal with it.”

“Sucker.”

“Look at his pouty little eyes. You know I have trouble denying him.”

“Careful,” Calcifer teases. “I’ll tell Harry.”

“I don’t mean it like that,” Tom laughs through the sudden pain in his chest, slipping away into the crowd as the song hums to a halt.

He finds Draco and Lyra swaying in the middle of the dance floor, talking quietly. Lyra looks up at Draco through clever, doll-blue eyes.

“Good afternoon,” Tom drawls. “Draco, it’s good to see you here – I trust Lyra’s been taking good care of you.”

“Likewise, Tom,” says Draco. Up close, he looks terrible, eyes bloodshot and smudged with purple. “I’ve been meaning to talk with you.”

“Would you care to chat over a dance?” Tom holds out a hand. The first chords of a new waltz tremble on the air.

Draco takes his hand. His fingers are clammy, but well-manicured. “Lyra, dear, I’ll find you in a moment. Thank you for the dance.”

Tom lets his feet carry him into a waltz, trying to mask his uncertainty. Lyra and Calcifer had taught him to dance in early July – they tell Tom he’s a natural, but he’s far from confident. Draco seems to catch on to his inexperience and takes the lead.

“She’s not being too much of a terror, is she?” Tom asks softly.

“What, Lyra? Oh, no. She doesn’t mean anything by it.”

Tom hums doubtfully. “She doesn’t want to marry Cal. She might see you as a viable alternative.”

Draco’s hand on his waist stiffens.

“Draco – I mean no offence by this, but you look like hell warmed over,” Tom says.

“Pardon?”

Tom scowls. “I – Muggle expression. Never mind. I don’t suppose that excuse about wanting to talk to me had any substance?”

Draco latches onto the new topic with apparent relief. “Yes, actually. I met up with Harry last week.”

It’s an effort to not stop in the middle of the dance floor. Tom forces his feet to keep moving. “I see. How is he?”

“He’s an absolute mess. Tom, have you not been in contact with him? He seemed really, desperately lonely.”

Tom almost trips. His high of power dissipates entirely. “We’ve been exchanging letters.” Short, bare letters with no emotional content, more status reports than actual correspondence – no, Harry doesn’t seem to want Tom’s words. He can’t blame him, really, not after what Tom and that Skeeter woman had put out into the world. “I sent him a watermelon for his birthday.”

Draco snorts in ungentlemanly surprise. “That seems almost cruel.”

“He’s not allergic,” Tom says stiffly. “It’s an inside joke.”

Draco falls silent, gazing gloomily over of Tom’s shoulder. “He told me to tell you he’s – how did he put it? He’s ‘thinking of you’.”

The song ends in a chorus of brass. Draco offers him a tight-lipped smile and lets go of his hand, leaving Tom to drift away in search of a familiar face.

The orchestra seems suddenly shrill, the perfume of guests mixing into a muddled, cloying scent. Tom drains his wineglass with a grimace.

Harry’s thinking of him.

He turns the thought over, examines it from every angle he can think of. As he twists it, it seems to sprout barbs, sinking into a spiny, metal thing that lodges painfully in the lining of his stomach.

***

The Blacks have offered Tom a rich guest bedroom for the summer, fitted with enchanted windows overlooking a tropical sea. He folds his legs atop his velvet bed and tugs out a book on magical fungi, readying himself for a peaceful handful of hours.

Calcifer, leaning in the doorway, clears his throat.

Tom looks up expectantly, placing a finger in the text. “Cal. What’s up?”

“I’ve just been thinking… what kind of Dark Lord do you want to be, Tom?”

Tom swallows drily. “What’s brought this on?”

“It used to be that the Dark Lord meant something – a figure around whom the Dark families could rally. We spent so long out of the sun, hidden away, forced into criminality. Now, though, with Dumbledore’s work, that imbalance is corrected.”

“Balance?” Tom rubs his thumb along the thick parchment pages of his book. “That was what some Dark Lords fought for, I suppose. That never truly motivated me, though. Even before Ha – even before.”

Calcifer steps inside, closing the door behind him. Tom scoots over so they can sit together on the bed. “Then what did motivate you?”

“In all honesty,” Tom says softly, “I don’t know. Power, I suppose. I’ve never wanted to be a _leader_ – or, I did, but it was just a means to an end.”

“What end?”

Tom licks his lips. There are some truths he doesn’t dare voice. The end: to be end _less_. Undying. “Research. Academia. We could do so much with magic if our society weren’t so obsessed with secrecy. The Ministry hoards knowledge like a dragon preparing for war.”

Calcifer blinks. “That – Tom, that’s weirdly noble of you.”

“No,” Tom breathes, setting the book aside. “No, it’s not.”

“Are you sure the Hat never considered Ravenclaw for you?”

“The more often you make that joke, the less funny it becomes.”

“Sorry, Tom.”

“Never mind that now,” Tom says, rising and roaming over to the windows.

“I think,” says Calcifer, “that a lot of people would be open to a campaign based on sharing knowledge. But at the same time –”

“I know. It’s difficult to drum up rebellious fervor over something like that. And – well, our people have always loved tradition. Nothing is more integral to magical society than our _secrets_.”

“You sound like you’ve thought about this a lot.”

“Not so much recently. But years ago, when I was young, and the magical world was new to me…? Oh, yes. I had it all planned out.”

“It…?”

“I was going to weaponize anti-Muggle sentiment. It was at a peak in my time… already, purebloods and halfbloods were uniting against Muggleborns. The bombs didn’t just kill nonmagicals, you see. No one in the magical world quite understood the war. They were terrified of Muggle influence spreading into the magical world, polluting their precious _status quo_.”

Calcifer cocks his head to the side like a songbird, impartially inquisitive. For a breath, Harry’s absence feels like freedom. “Like the current war? You think this is all a rallying point?”

“No,” Tom says. “You don’t understand. You were born in this era. When I entered the wizarding world, there were so many splintered factions, all with a million conflicting priorities… to bring them under a single banner would have been ludicrous. Even given who Dumbledore is, he’s done something very impressive in unifying Britain.”

“Then why –”

“He’s doing what all tyrants do when order is established: expanding his empire. It’s only natural, isn’t it?”

“Is this what you would have done?”

“Among other things. I had generations’ worth of plans.”

“Generations…?”

“Yes.” The false sea on the other side of the glass sparkles with light from a magicked sun.

“Right.” Calcifer hesitates. His doubt feels like a damp breeze on the back of Tom’s neck. “But, Tom, _you’re_ Muggleborn, aren’t you?”

Tom turns, examining Calcifer. The blue of the veins around his dark eyes, the soft curve of his nose. “I thought so, for a long time. But I’m a halfblood.”

Fascination sparks to life in Calcifer’s expression. “Oh? Where does your magical blood come from?”

“Actually, I was hoping we could determine that together,” Tom says slowly. “I assume your family keeps more extensive genealogical records than Hogwarts does?”

“Oh, yes,” says Calcifer. “You won’t be disappointed, Tom.”

***

Calcifer is right: the Black library’s genealogical section is a wonder. The Hogwarts library’s records of the old family lineages had given Tom the impression that wizards put little stock in documenting births, but he sees now that his assumption could not have been further from the truth.

He ghosts his fingers over the spines of the thick texts, feeling his mouth begin to water. Somewhere in here wait the names of his family. He doesn’t need the knowledge locked away in Harry’s mind anymore.

“Do you know what we’re looking for?”

Carefully, Tom shifts his gaze to Calcifer. “I do.”

Califer fidgets, opening his mouth, then seems to think better of it.

Tom swallows his reservations. “We’re looking for the descendants of Salazar Slytherin.”

His eyes light up with a familiar, hungry fire. “Tom – you’re _sure_?”

“ _Harry’s not the only Parseltongue at Hogwarts_ ,” Tom hisses, amused. “Of course I’m sure, Cal.”

“Wow,” Calcifer steadies himself against the bookshelf, open-mouthed with awe. “Does that mean Harry’s descended from Slytherin, too?”

“No,” Tom says. “We’re not sure where he got his Parseltongue from. Harry… Harry is an exception to many rules.”

“Huh,” says Calcifer distantly, a wild smile eating its way across his face. “ _Huh_. Far from dirty-blooded, eh?”

“Dirty-blooded?” Tom says sharply.

Calcifer flushes. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just – you understand, with the Muggles on the move…”

Tom flexes his right hand, feeling the pull of his scars. “Of course.”

“Well. Anyway.” Calcifer clears his throat. “We should look at the Gaunt family first. They were Slytherin’s direct descendants.”

“Gaunt.” Tom tastes the name carefully, not sure how he likes it. “Wait, ‘were’? Did something happen to them?”

“A gradual decline from prominence, then generations of isolation and inbreeding,” Calcifer says cheerily.

Tom scowls. “Ah.”

“Nothing wrong with a bit of inbreeding!”

Coming from a boy planning to marry his second cousin, this is not reassuring.

“They’ll be in here.” Calcifer nudges Tom gently aside so he can pull a dusty ledger from the shelf. “What first name are we looking for?”

“Marvolo,” Tom says, leaning over Calcifer’s shoulder to see the pages of cramped, precise handwritten names and dates. “My grandfather.”

“Grandfather,” Calcifer hums. “Okay, so we’ll be looking for a Marvolo Gaunt born around 1900 to 1930, right?”

Tom laughs, startled. “Calcifer, _I_ was born in that timeframe. Look between 1860 and 1890.”

“I forgot,” Calcifer shuffles back a few decades in the records. “You’d think having my grandfather treat you like an old friend would have hit it home, but no… think of it, Tom, you’d be an old man by now! How strange is that?”

“Very strange,” Tom agrees drily, watching intently as Calcifer runs a finger down the inky tables of the record book.

Calcifer turns the page, sneezing at the resulting cloud of dust.

Tom’s fingers itch to snatch the ledger from Calcifer and do the searching on his own. Surely there is a spell to make this process go faster – he’s so _close_.

Unable to contain his restlessness and worried about accidentally turning an innocent book into a bat, Tom leaps to his feet and starts pacing.

Calcifer glances up, brow furrowed. “All right, there, Tom?”

“Don’t stop looking,” Tom snaps. “I just need a moment.”

“Right.” Calcifer goes back to the book, then – “Oh! I think I found him!”

Tom springs to his side.

“Here. One Marvolo Gaunt, born in 1878 to Gormlaith Gaunt and William Selwyn in… Little Hangleton. Died 1927, also in Little Hangleton. There you go!”

“Is there anything else?”

Calcifer frowns. “No. There’s an enchantment on these books that write down the births and deaths of anyone descended from a certain list of families… this is all it records. Name, date, location, parents.”

“Intriguing,” Tom says, shrugging aside his mild disappointment at the lack of information on his grandfather. His _grandfather_. How strange, to see his existence documented in these musty pages. “Will I be in there? What about my mother?”

“You should both be in here.” Calcifer flips a few decades forward and sets about slowly tracing his finger down the list of names, looking for someone with ‘Marvolo Gaunt’ listed as a parent. Looking _very slowly_.

Tom slumps down to the library floor, sighing deeply. Calcifer looks alarmed. God, but Tom misses Harry. For all his flaws, _Harry_ had never questioned Tom’s melodrama. “Keep looking,” he mutters.

“Oh! Here… no, wait, we’re looking for your mom, right?”

“Right.” Tom shoots back to his feet, trying to see what Calcifer’s looking at.

Calcifer huffs out a little laugh, pointing. “Here’s a Morfin, born to Marvolo Gaunt and Cassiopeia… also Gaunt. Looks like you have an uncle, Tom!” He pauses. “Well, _had_ an uncle, anyway. He died a couple decades back.”

“He was alive for my entire childhood,” Tom realizes, ears buzzing distantly. “He could have taken me in. I would have had a family.” He grips the shelves, feeling unsteady.

“Do… do you want me to keep looking for your mother?” Calcifer asks, eying him warily.

Tom scrapes a hand through his hair. “Yeah.”

He spends the next few minutes stewing amidst the dust motes and rasp of turning pages. He had an uncle. Just another tie severed in the jump between times, perhaps; still, Tom wonders if he and his uncle could have been friends. Had Morfin been a Parselmouth, too?

Tom imagines a man with long legs like his own, gray-bearded, maybe with a monocle. He likes this vision of Morfin. This man, surely, would have spent years scouring the land for his deceased sister’s son. He would have a cane and a posh accent and a dog named Bertrand.

Tom had spent much of his childhood dreaming up uncles – uncles and grandmothers, estranged twins and long-lost fathers. The idea that there really had been someone out there, sharing his blood – someone who’d had magic, yet never found Tom? It’s… troubling.

A hand lands gently on his shoulder. Calcifer folds down beside him on the floor. “Merope.”

“What?”

“Look here. Merope Gaunt, born 1907 to Marvolo and Cassiopeia in Little Hangleton. Died in 1926, in London.”

Tom’s breath catches in his throat. “Yeah – yes, that lines up. I think that’s her.”

“She was so young,” Calcifer says, fingers landing on the date of death. “Nineteen?”

“The nuns told me she was just a girl.” Tom licks his lips, transfixed by the spiky letters forming his mother’s name. _Merope Gaunt_.

“I’ll find you next, then?”

“I – sure. Whatever.” Tom leans back, giving himself up to thought. “Calcifer, how would you feel about going on a little trip with me?”

“Whatever you want,” Calcifer says readily. “What year were you born, Tom?”

“1926.”

This time the wait is blessedly short: “Found you!” Calcifer says excitedly. “Tom Marvolo Riddle, born to… to Tom Wilhelm Riddle and Merope Marie Gaunt in London, 1926. You were named after your father, Tom?”

“Mhmm,” Tom says, no longer paying attention. He’s a Gaunt, then. He decides he likes the sound of that, inbreeding or no. “Right. We’re going to Little Hangleton now.”

Calcifer looks up from the page. “ _Now_?”

“Yes.” Tom pulls himself to his feet, feeling flush with nervous energy. “Do you have a map of the Floo Network?”

***

Tom and Calcifer take the Floo to the town of Whitby, then Apparate ten kilometers north. Grassy fields sprawl out before them, summer-dry and uncut. A gust of wind sends their stalks into a drunken dance upon the hilltops. Tom rests a hand on Calcifer’s shoulder, fighting a wave of vertigo.

“It should be right around here,” Calcifer glances up into the flat gray sky. “That way’s east.”

“We should find a road,” Tom says.

They choose a direction almost at random, wading through wildflowers towards a stand of trees in the distance.

As they pass through a wooded area at the crest of a hill, Calcifer says, “this is kind of an adventure, isn’t it?” He sounds delighted at the prospect. There’s a spring to his step that the Black household seems to leech out of him.

“Yes,” Tom says indulgently. “Quite an adventure. Who knows what foul beasts might leap out of the shrubbery and attack us? We’d best ready our strongest curses.”

“Excuse me,” says a voice from the shrubbery. “Are you lost?”

Tom certainly does _not_ scream. He and Calcifer scramble backwards, clutching at their wands – in a very dignified fashion, of course.

A boy of about their age emerges fully from the bushes, clearly making an effort not to laugh.

“We’re not lost,” Calcifer says, wrinkling his nose at the grass stains on the boy’s trousers. “We’re just doing a spot of – ah, of country… sight-seeing…?”

“Yeah,” Tom says, grinning. “It rather ruins the point of _country sight-seeing_ if you know precisely where you are, after all.”

The boy dissolves into an oddly familiar cackle. “You two are from the city, then? How’d you find yourselves out here?”

“None of your concern,” says Calcifer crisply. “We’ll be on our way now, _right Tom_?”

Tom feels his good humor ebb away. This boy is a Muggle. Whether he knows it or not, he’s an enemy, not a source of brief entertainment. “Right.”

“Do you have a destination in mind?” The boy looks less amused, but his expression is still open and friendly.

Calcifer takes Tom’s elbow, making to drag him away. “Little Hangleton,” Tom tells him anyway. “We’re looking for Little Hangleton.”

“In that case, you’re in luck,” says the boy. “I live there! Also, it’s in the exact opposite direction as you’re walking.”

“Ah,” Calcifer says, tugging Tom in the opposite direction. “In that case, we must go…”

“I’ll show you the way. Wouldn’t want you getting lost again!”

“No, thank you.”

The boy seems to have come to the conclusion that Calcifer is to be ignored. “My name’s Will, by the way,” he tells Tom conversationally. For the first time, Tom registers his broad shoulders and mischievous blue eyes. There’s something in the cast of his face… Tom can’t put his finger on it.

“I’m Tom,” he says. “And this is Cal.”

Calcifer groans theatrically.

“Cal, huh?” Will laughs. “You’re a prick. I like you.”

Tom snickers, seeing Calcifer’s blush.

It’s a quick walk over the hill to the town, made quicker by Will’s incessant teasing and Calcifer’s returned barbs.

“Here you go,” Will says as they crest the ridge and look over a quaint collection of buildings, roofs mossy and roads freshly-paved.

Just barely, Tom can make out the scent of the sea. He waits for something to click, for part of his mind to say _home_. There’s nothing.

“It’s not much,” says Will. Still, his face is warm with pride as he looks out over the rambling streets of Little Hangleton.

“Charming,” Calcifer says. “Now leave us alone, scoundrel.” He no longer sounds like he means it.

“Sure, city boy,” Will sticks his hands in his pockets, showing no signs of leaving. “What brings you two all the way out here, anyway?”

Tom’s focus sharpens. “We’re looking for some of Cal’s relatives on his mother’s side, actually.”

Calcifer shoots him a _why-would-you-even-bother-lying-about-that_ glare. Come down to it, Tom isn’t sure why he _is_ lying – but he’s not ready to associate himself with his mother’s family, even to a Muggle.

“The Gaunts,” Tom continues. “They were a reclusive bunch that lived in the area, apparently.”

Will shrugs. “I dunno any Gaunts myself, but if they died near here they’ll be buried in the graveyard.”

“Excellent,” Tom strides forward, gesturing for Calcifer to follow.

“D’you want a guide?” Will offers from behind them.

Tom realizes that he has once again made off in a random direction. Normally, simple self-assurance is enough to get him where he needs to go – but for the sake of Calcifer’s nascent crush, he supposes he can permit a tagalong. “Fine.”

By the time they arrive at the graveyard, Calcifer and Will have given up on sniping at one another and have subsided into clumsy flirting. Tom leaves them to it.

He has always hated gravesites. The taller stones loom threateningly over him, monuments to mortality, crumbling remnants of the rich dead. The freshest graves are marked by simple plaques, gray and crisp. Wilted flowers crown some of the stones, feeble tributes at the feet of their rotting masters. The futility of it all makes him sick.

Still, the rows of buried corpses provide a captivating insight into the history of the town. Deeper in, farther back in time, the markers become grander. Obelisks, not crosses. Statues with their heads knocked off. Rounded stones too faded to read their names. And there, in the middle of the cemetery, pride of place, a great marble slab, free of the grime and printed with a series of names.

Somewhere in this mire lie the remains of his uncle and grandfather. Tom clenches his teeth, trying to bring his mind back to the task at hand. Morfin and Marvolo, both dead for nearly half a century.

Despite his best efforts, his feet carry him still deeper into the graveyard, drawn magnetically to the slab at the center.

With a sense of inevitability, he reads the name at the bottom of the list of dead. ‘ _Tom Riddle_.’

The world narrows to a breathless point. Tom watches as if from a far distance as his hand reaches out to touch the marble engraving. The stone is cold against his bare skin.

Something warm and living lands on his shoulder. Tom flinches away, hissing in wordless shock.

Will snatches his hand away, grinning apologetically. “Did you just _hiss_ at me? You two sure are a strange pair.”

Tom glares, finding himself empty of the patience that had been sustaining him.

“My name’ll be on there someday…” Will nods to the headstone.

“Come again?” Tom says, blinking at him through the haze of his dread.

One of Will’s long, bone-pale fingers reaches out to tap Tom’s name etched into the marble. “My grandfather. His grandparents founded this town back in the day.”

And of course, this makes sense – that is not Tom’s name at all. It’s his father’s.

Will chuckles at whatever expression he sees on Tom’s face. “I might be well-to-do, but that won’t stop me from hanging out in the fields! I’ve always loved trees.”

 _I’m his half-uncle_ , Tom thinks distantly. His father, the original Tom Riddle, had produced other children.

‘ _1905 – 1981_ ,’ is printed under the dead man’s name. Tom hadn’t noticed the dates, before.

Will is still talking, but Tom can’t hear him over the sudden rush of blood in his ears.

“He died just recently, then?” his own voice, high and alien, remarks.

“Recently? It’s been fifteen years,” Will takes a step back from Tom, scratching nervously at his jaw. “I hardly remember my grandfather. He and my grandma only married when he was in his forties, see. He was old to be a new parent, especially for back then.”

Tom’s fingertips itch with magic. “He was alive all that time? He _remarried_?”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about –”

Tom closes the distance between himself and this Muggle boy who shares his blood, hunting for eye contact. Will stumbles backward, but Tom snatches him up by the front of his shirt, hauling him closer.

 _There_. He delves into eyes the color of the sea at noon. Old memories, wrinkled and softened by time, stare back at him. The imprint of kindness: veins thick and bulbous under leathery skin, the sensation of sun on the back of a young boy’s neck, daisy chains in the sunlight. Tom discards the childhood recollections – Will had been honest in his admission that he barely remembers his grandfather.

He pushes deeper into the Muggle’s psyche, uncovering blurred images of a faded scrapbook. Wedding photos: a man in a sleek black suit, with a widow’s peak and high cheekbones. A younger woman, hair done up in a cascade of curls. The same woman in the flesh, hair bleached gray, looking down with fondness.

Tom scours deeper, searching for some hint of a previous marriage, some indication of his own genesis. There’s nothing. He’s been gone from this world for too many decades now.

Released from his mental grip, Will stumbles away, panting and shivering. Tom had been too invasive, he notes coldly. Perhaps Muggles are less resilient to magical probes than magicals.

“Are you a ghost?” Will rasps.

Tom raises a brow. “Don’t be ridiculous.” But he sees it, too. The man in that photobook had been _him_ , twisted by age, in the same way the name on the man’s headstone was _his_.

The cold in his voice has leaked into the rest of his body, rendering his veins a mess of sluggish, icy rivers and his tongue a frozen weapon. His father had been ‘well-to-do’, prosperous – he’d lived here, in this quaint village a stone’s throw from the sea, while Tom choked on his own ashes in the warped landscape of wartime London.

That man’s features – his widow’s peak and dark eyes and straight nose – feel like a mask stretched over Tom’s bones. He itches to rip it from himself.

“Hey, guys, I think I found something.” Calcifer has wandered over, but pauses in confusion as he takes in Will’s fear and Tom’s… whatever Tom is feeling. Breathless. Numb.

“We’re leaving,” he manages to choke out, wondering if he’d inherited his father’s voice, too.

Will takes the chance to bolt. Tom lets him, watching dispassionately as he makes for a mansion over the hill.

“What happened?” Calcifer takes a stumbling step after Will, face crumpled by regret.

Tom has never wished so desperately that he were capable of strong fire magic. He wants to burn it all to the ground: this town, this cemetery, the mansion over the hill.

“Are you okay?”

“I said we’re _leaving_ , Cal. Let’s get out of here.”

“Before we do – there’s something you should see, Tom.”

Tom shivers violently. The sound of his own name on the air feels suddenly wrong.

“Tom?”

“ _Don’t_.”

Calcifer reaches out as if to touch him, then flinches away from Tom’s overactive magic.

Tom smooths the emotion off his face and tries to excise the frost from his voice. “What did you find? Let’s make this quick.”

“It’s just this way,” Calcifer sets off along the rows of graves, guiding them closer to the seedy outskirts of the yard. “Here.”

A simple stone, indicating an otherwise unmarked grave.

Tom kneels down. “That’s Grindelwald’s symbol carved here,” he realizes, inspecting the emblem etched into the stone in place of a name or date.

“Yeah.”

“Why would it be here?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Calcifer sniffs. “But I thought it might have something to do with the Gaunts. Why else would there be a magical symbol in this town?”

Tom feels a spark of warmth return to his bones. “You’re right.” He leans closer to the stone marker, trying to make out the details of the carving. It’s Grindelwald’s symbol for certain: the triangle, shot through with a line like a cat’s pupil; the circle – carved irregularly, sure, but still recognizable – _wait_. “ _Scourgify_.”

The lines of the craving shed their decades-old layer of grime and moss, revealing the symbol beneath in all its fine details.

The simple circle of Grindelwald’s symbol has been replaced by an ouroboros: a snake eating its own tail. Tom feels a giddy rush of excitement, ignoring Calcifer’s gasp of wonder.

“What does that mean?” Calcifer moves to a respectful distance from Tom, starting to bounce in place.

Tom bites his lip, trying to concentrate. A memory tickles him: a snake in a similar style, carved somewhere it shouldn’t be, hidden in plain sight. Another piece of Tom’s true, magical legacy.

He grins, hissing out a solemn, “ _open_.”

The stone cracks in two, splitting down the cat’s-pupil line of the emblem. With bated breath, Tom pulls apart the halves. Inside nestles something small and dull.

“A ring.” He holds it up to the light, inspecting the rusted metal, the rock mounted at its center. “I… huh. Not what I expected, in all honesty.”

Calcifer tilts his head. “Could I touch it, Tom?”

Tom feels the ice wash over him once more, gripping his wooden heart between its slippery talons. What does it mean, that his own name feels like a brand stamped into him, choking his secrets away? “No,” he snaps, perhaps too harshly. He slips on the ring, wishing he could muster up the reverence he might once have offered a relic of his family legacy. “We’re leaving, Calcifer. Now.”

He holds out his ringed hand with imperial disdain and Side-Alongs them both back to the communal Floo in Whitby. The whirling green flames strike a grating harmony with the discord in his mind.

Calcifer steps back into the Black household with an uncertain smile. “I’d say that went quite well,” he says. “We found your grandfather’s grave and got to do some excellent, ah, country sight-seeing! And all without being noticed by the enemy.”

“What, the Muggles?” The ring is an unfamiliar weight on his finger. It remains as cold now, after being worn for several minutes, as it had been when he plucked it from the gravestone.

“Mmhmm.”

Tom scoffs, feeling restless and disinterested in anything Calcifer might say. “You didn’t seem at all peeved by Will’s _notice_.”

Calcifer pales. “Are you all right, Tom? You’ve seemed out of sorts since –”

A rasping hiss of irritation tears itself from Tom’s lungs. The rug under Calcifer’s feet abruptly twists, throwing him to the floor and pinning him there, growing the fur and fangs and claws of a saber-toothed tiger. “Don’t call me – just. Just _don’t_.”

“Okay,” Calcifer pants, pushing the tiger-rug’s paws away from his esophagus. It growls, opening its massive jaws. “I mean – yes, my lord. Anything.”

Tom stares down at him, lost in the pulsing roar of his own wooden heartbeat.

Calcifer looks like he’s drowning.

Tom turns and walks away, turning the tiger back into furniture with a flick of his wrist.

His room, finally, is quiet. He shutters the enchanted window and falls down into his bed, biting his lip against the burn of tears.

The leather diary, his oldest confidante, lays on the bedside table, open to a blank page. He picks it up, paging back to an entry from years ago.

‘ _I am Lord Voldemort_.’ His handwriting was different back then. More cramped, less ostentatious.

He had wanted different things, too – he had been truly ambitious, hungry for a better world. Longing for more than the touch of a green-eyed boy.

That’s what it comes to, in the end. He misses Harry – Harry, who looks at him like he can see the multiplicity of names swirling under his skin, who walks with him on nights when neither of them can sleep, who shakes storms from the heavens. Harry, whose letters have been so painfully curt lately.

Harry, who Draco says has been thinking of Tom; Harry, who Luna says doesn’t know how to express love in words.

Tom closes his diary on the old entry and summons a quill and parchment.

‘ _Dear Harry_ ,’ he writes.

‘ _I feel like my father’s ghost. Is this why you were so reluctant to share my past with me?_

 _‘Draco and I spoke just yesterday…_ ’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news, everyone! I have now drafted all 36 chapters of the fic, so I can just about guarantee this weekly schedule will continue until the full thing is posted :D


	27. Reunions and Farewells

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Potters hold the funeral, and summer finally comes to an end.

They hold the funeral on a Thursday in mid-August, a short distance into the birch wood.

The Ministry must have cast some sort of preservation charm on Henry’s corpse. It lies pristine and icy in its coffin, eyes mercifully closed. Harry can’t stop staring the cadaver, locked in grim fascination on this face that would look exactly like his own in death. The disguise pendant, which Lily had brought home and pressed him into wearing, hangs heavy around his neck.

Wizarding funerals are strange, beautiful ceremonies. Harry sits with the other mourners in the leaf-strewn clearing in the woods, holding a sobbing Dahlia against his side and adding his voice to the solemn death-chant. Somewhere deep in the woods, he can hear the lone remaining oak striking out a delicate harmony to their ritual.

It feels ancient – these songs, this place, the thrum of magic hanging heavy on the lethargic summer wind. Tom, Harry thinks, would like the funeral rites. He would like that wizards are buried in forests, surrounded by people whose lives they had touched, surrounded by _music_.

Then again, the rites could well have terrified Tom. Harry may never know; Tom’s not here today. He’d written a week ago with a neat bullet-pointed list of reasons why it would be a bad idea for him to show up.

Harry had been angry when he’d responded. He’d accused Tom of cowardice and told him that he would have to face Lily and James eventually. Some twisted part of him, he realized after fully processing the situation, had been looking forward to the funeral, for it represented a chance to see Tom.

Just a day later, consumed with guilt, he’d sent Death Star back to Tom with a doodle of a cross-eyed hippogriff. Tom had forgiven his moment of irritability, and they had resumed their usual correspondences.

Still, Harry can’t quite shake the notion that Tom is going to waltz into the clearing at any moment, flashing a smile and an imitation of a respectful nod towards the adults. Then he’d come sit by Harry, fold his long legs under himself, and whisper an irreverent comment perfectly calibrated to make Harry snort with laughter.

Tom doesn’t come, even as the death-song comes to a close, even as Lily and James feed their son to the loamy mouth of the earth, even as a black-clad Hermione and Draco bid their quiet, awkward farewells to he and his siblings.

Harry finds closure in the halting return of Dahlia’s mischievous smile and Geoff’s quiet laughter with Damocles, not the jaws of the wood enfolding the casket. They’re going to be okay, Henry’s two siblings. If they can find it in themselves to move forward, so can Harry.

Even if he wishes he could swap places with Henry. Even if Tom’s absence feels like a knife digging into his forehead. Even if he feels, now more than ever, that he is unworthy of what beauty remains in this world.

Harry drags his entire mattress into Dahlia and Geoffrey’s room that night. They lay in a heap and talk for hours: about stars, and lightning bugs, and the sound of Henry’s snoring.

***

Lily and James are granted three vacation days in the wake of the funeral, and for that short while, the Potter house once again feels like home. Sirius and Remus come over and indulge Geoff in a Quidditch scrimmage. Harry teaches Dahlia his recipe for lemon cookies. They all share stories of Henry, determinedly avoid talking about Tom, and take refuge in each other.

But then the vacation days end and leave the house empty again but for the three children. Lily’s shifts now stretch long into the night, and they hardly see her at all.

“What do they need you for, anyway?” Geoff finally demands of James over dinner. “You’re not even a Ministry employee anymore. I don’t see why they constantly want you in the office. I – I miss Mum!”

James winces, running a hand through his graying hair. “I know, kiddo. I miss Lily as much as you do. She’s working on a very important – very _classified_ – project right now. It’ll be in the _Prophet_ soon, though, and we’ll be able to talk about it.”

Geoff scowls into his broccoli.

After dinner, though, he and Harry corner Dahlia. “Do you know what that secret project Dad was talking about is?” Geoff asks his sister.

“Maybe,” Dahlia says.

Harry frowns sternly down at her. Seer or not, Dahlia certainly knows things she shouldn’t; he just wishes she didn’t insist on being so enigmatic about those things.

“Um…” she looks away. “Something to do with flying horses and a weird-looking wineglass, I think?”

Geoff blinks. “Wait, what?”

“It’s always horses with you, isn’t it?” Harry sighs, similarly baffled.

“I like animals,” Dahlia grumbles. “Say, Harry, are you going to write to Tom tonight? Can I add something to the letter?”

“I don’t see why not,” Harry tells her, and they start to ramble upstairs.

Geoff clatters after them, saying, “what do you mean, ‘a weird wineglass’? _Dahl_.”

She ignores him. They settle into what has become their evening routine: Harry sitting at Dahlia’s cluttered desk, penning a letter as the other two supervise.

“Tell him about that butterfly I caught,” Dahlia orders.

Geoff snickers. “The one whose wings you crushed?”

“It was _fine_. I just wanted to see it up close, is all.”

“Tell him about the secret project,” Geoff says. “Tom probably knows all about it.”

Harry squints down at the parchment. “Geoff, how would he know anything more than we do?”

“Tom knows all sorts of useful things,” Geoff says indignantly. “He always has an idea of what’s going on.”

Harry rolls his eyes and obeys. “‘James says Lily has been working on a secret project with the Ministry. Geoffrey says you will know what that project is. Please explain, O Almighty Tom.’ How’s that?”

“Tell him about the colony of blue mice we found in the woods,” says Dahlia. “And about that little toy chicken Luna brought me from France. And that we made cookies.”

“Right,” Harry says. “Er, D’you have anything to add, Geoff?”

“That I miss him,” Geoff says, sighing.

“Tell him I want another watermelon,” Dahlia hums.

“And that he should just visit!” Geoff says. “I don’t understand why he won’t stop in.”

“He has his apprenticeship with Lord Black to attend to,” Harry recites the excuse Lily had formulated, hating the taste of it in his mouth.

Geoff stands, fingers twitching with barely restrained energy. “Harry, I _know_ that’s a lie. _Everyone_ knows that’s a lie! He didn’t even show up to the funeral, he left without even saying goodbye… I’m tired of playing along with this ridiculous charade. I miss Tom.”

“I miss him, too.” Harry sets his ballpoint down, turning to meet Geoff’s eyes. “It’s not my place to tell you about his… situation, though.”

“Whose place is it to tell us?”

“Your parents.” Harry bites his lip. “But Tom’s doing all right. We’ll see him at school in just a week or so.”

Tom’s _not_ doing all right. His letters are ostensibly cheerful, but Harry knows him; there’s an undercurrent of rage to his words, a sense of restless resentment toward the world at large. It’s concerning, not least because of what the first letter had recounted: Tom had visited the town where his parents had lived. He’d discovered that his father had been alive throughout his childhood.

“I should send the letter off,” Harry tells the others.

A muscle jumps in Geoff’s jaw. Dahlia looks away, growing subdued.

The nib of Harry’s quill hovers for a moment over the bottom of the page. ‘ _With love, Harry, Geoffrey, and Dahlia_ ,’ he writes eventually, then rolls up the letter for Death Star to take.

They all sleep together in Dahlia’s room again that night, windows open to dispel the thick summer heat.

***

Tom’s answering letter comes back the next day, containing a detailed account of his fruitless efforts to learn basic healing magic. The postscript reads: ‘ _In fact, I do have a good idea of what Lily’s secret project might be. You should find tomorrow morning’s_ Daily Prophet _quite interesting._ ’

“Cryptic bastard,” Harry mutters, giving Death Star a scratch on the head.

“I told you Tom would know!” Geoff crows. “Tom’s a _genius_.”

Harry rolls his eyes. Dahlia laughs.

The next morning’s _Prophet_ bears the headline, ‘ _TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT TO BE REENSTATED._ ’

“Woah,” Geoff breathes, reading the article over Harry’s shoulder. “They haven’t held one of those in ages. They’re apparently obscenely dangerous.”

“You won’t be competing,” says Harry quickly, picking up on the excitement in his voice.

“But –”

“Absolutely not. This is a terrible idea. What are they _thinking_? Especially now? There’s a war on!”

“Harry? Are you okay?” Geoffrey catches his arm, hazel eyes warm with concern.

Harry becomes gradually aware that he’s trembling. “I – ‘weird-looking wineglass,’ Dahl? Really? That is _not_ how I would describe the bloody Goblet of Fire.”

“Is that what that was?” Dahlia asks from her seat on the kitchen floor, looking utterly unconcerned. “I dunno, Harry. Wineglasses are the only cups I know that have that funny flat base and the – the sticky-up part.”

“The stem?” Geoff asks.

“Yeah! The stem.”

Harry lets out a long breath. “Whatever. I’m going to go try and firecall Tom again.”

Geoff snatches the newspaper from him. “Didn’t you say the wards weren’t letting you?”

“Yeah, well, it probably won’t work… I just need to talk to someone about this.”

Dahlia and Geoff offer up identical expressions of betrayal. “ _We’re_ someones,” Dahlia points out.

“You –” Harry deflates. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it says here that they’re only going to let us compete if we’re of age,” Geoffrey says, frowning down at the _Prophet_. “So I couldn’t be a champion anyway.”

Dahlia hums doubtfully. “I’m sure you could find some way to cheat your way in.”

Harry sputters out a fervent, “ _no_.”

“Hey, Harry, _you’re_ of age! You could be a champion!” Geoff bounces in place, beaming. “You’d probably win, too. Didn’t you take down like a dozen Muggles at once?”

Harry winces. “The stuff I did at Hogsmeade – that was bad, Geoff. That’s not who I want to be. And no, I won’t be competing.” _I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime_.

“Let’s go out to the woods,” Dahlia pipes up, and Geoff reluctantly lets the topic rest.

***

The morning of September 1st, Harry finds himself with some unexpected company at the breakfast table. He’s chewing on one of Rooke’s blueberry muffins and staring out into the woods when James slips into the kitchen and sits down beside him.

“I’ve taken the day off to help you kids get to King’s Cross,” he says in response to Harry’s suspicious stare.

“Oh,” Harry says warily. “It’s just, you’re not usually up this early, even on days when you _do_ have work.”

James sighs. “We need to talk, Harry. I thought now would be the best time for it.”

Harry hands him a muffin as a silent offering of peace.

“First off, you’ll be expected to go back to wearing your disguise pendant at all times when you’re at school.”

Harry restrains himself from snatching back the muffin. “I’m tired of glamouring my face. I’m done with _hiding_.”

James’s hand curls into a fist. “Harry, I don’t think you fully understand the situation. The Unspeakables are _not_ impressed by the reports they’ve received about you. You’re not being held responsible for Alice’s condition, and the Dark magic you used in Hogsmeade is excused under self-defense laws from the seventies. But just because you’re exempted from legal culpability doesn’t mean you’re not being watched _very_ carefully. An official war declaration is inevitable, and after that the Ministry will have far more power than they do now. You’ve put yourself in great danger. Please don’t give them more of a reason to… to get rid of you.”

“You think they’d –” Harry swallows. “What about Tom?”

“Albus has continually advocated for Tom’s good character.” James breaks a chunk off his muffin and examines it. “As I have advocated for yours.” He meets Harry’s eyes for the first time this morning. “Now, on the subject of Tom –”

Harry feels himself sharpen. “He’s my _roommate_. I spend a lot of time around him. And the others are going to spend a lot of time around him, too. Just because you drove him out of the house doesn’t make him any less a part of this family.”

James frowns. “I thought you were afraid of him. Are you sure you want to go back to living together?”

“I –” Harry wavers. “Yeah. I might have, uh. I might have been… embellishing? What happened with Longbottom –”

“Hush.”

Harry hushes.

“I’m not going to pry,” James says. “Just… if you can lie to protect yourself, you can wear a damn necklace. Got it?”

“It’s not the same!”

“I’m not saying it is. But this is necessary, Harry. I need you to stay safe.”

Reluctantly, Harry slips the amulet back around his neck. The stone feels warm under his shirt. “So, you _don’t_ think Tom is a dangerous lying cuckoo bird?”

James’s eyes widen. “It was never my intent to – your mother and I – Look. I… I don’t have access to whatever classified information Lily does, but I do know _Tom_. He’s a good kid. I truly believe that, regardless of his more questionable decisions.”

He’s looking, now, very intently at Harry. Harry scrubs at his eyes, feeling exposed.

“I love you, Harry. Oh, kiddo, it’s gonna be okay… c’m’ere.”

Harry presses his teary face into James’s chest gratefully, letting himself cry.

James’s voice, when he speaks, rumbles through his ribs. Harry feels his words as much as he hears them. “We missed your birthday again this year.”

Harry tries to pull away.

“You shared his birthday all along, didn’t you? It took me over two years to put it together. Why didn’t you say something?”

“What would I have said? You shouldn’t have to deal with _another_ birthday on top of the other four’s. I’m lucky to have been offered all that I have been – it would be wrong to ask for more.”

“Harry, what are you talking about? You’re entitled to celebrate yourself. That’s hardly a burden.”

Squirming, Harry manages to extricate himself from James’s hold.

“We should have gotten you in to see a Mind Healer years ago,” James sighs, looking upon him with an emotion that feels like pity.

“I don’t want to see a Mind Healer,” Harry says. “I’m fine. Er, thank you for your concern.”

James wavers. “Either way, there’s something I want you to have. Take it as a belated birthday gift from Henry and myself.”

Suddenly alert, Harry watches carefully as he places an intimately familiar package down on the table. Even enveloped in the Potter’s reindeer-printed holiday wrapping paper, Harry recognizes the shape of the Invisibility Cloak. He reaches out to touch the package, glancing at James for his permissive nod.

“This artifact has been in the family for countless generations,” James says. “Passed down from parent to oldest child. I gave it to Henry in his third year at Hogwarts.”

Harry rips the Cloak free of its wrapping, feeling the liquid-y chill of the fabric beneath his broom-callused fingers.

“I hoped he would become more of a troublemaker if he had it to enable him,” James says fondly. “Henry took after his mother in that respect: he only disobeyed rules when they got in the way of something he really wanted. My old friends and I used to flaunt rules just because they existed.”

“It should go to Geoffrey,” says Harry, trying to hand the Cloak back. “He’ll make trouble with it – _he’s_ your eldest child, really. I don’t quite count.”

“Of course you count,” James says firmly. “Besides, I think Henry would want it to go to you. He held you in such high esteem, you know.”

“Did he?” Harry asks distantly, swallowing a fresh wave of tears.

James smiles. “Harry, he adored you. You should have seen his face in class when he watched you duel. Or – your mother set aside all the letters he sent us. He used to write paragraphs about how grateful he was to you for befriending Luna, or the way you took the edge off the other Slytherins.”

“Oh,” says Harry in a small voice, thinking of the confrontation in the room behind the tapestry where they had studied for Snape’s advanced class, and the betrayal in Henry’s eyes as he asked _who are you?_ “I suppose I spent so long seeing him as a better version of myself that I never registered… that.”

He finds James’s warm hands on his own. “Harry, you are exactly who you need to be. Know that.”

“You said yourself: the Ministry is suspicious of me for a reason. I’m _not_ who I need to be. I’m… I’m all the worst parts of Henry.”

“No. You’re _Harry_ , all the good and all the bad. You’re my son, and I love you of your own merit.”

A tear slips onto Harry’s cheek.

“Happy birthday, kiddo,” James murmurs, pressing a kiss to his head and spilling the Cloak into his lap. “Go get packed, okay? We’ll leave in an hour. I’m going to go wake Geoff and Dahl.”

Harry sits for a long time in the kitchen, watching the movement of the rising sun and feeling the Cloak run over his fingers.

***

They arrive late to King’s Cross – Dahlia had spent ten minutes frantically searching the room for her lucky pencil, Geoff had misplaced his broomstick somehow, and Harry almost forgot to grab Death Star’s favorite treats from the cupboard.

Students are already filing onto the great scarlet Hogwarts Express, bidding fond farewells to parents and younger siblings. Dahlia clings to Harry’s hand, pinching in mute teasing as Harry stands on his toes to search the dwindling crowd for a glimpse of a certain tall, dark head.

Tom is nowhere in sight, however. Lyra and Calcifer are similarly missing – Harry assumes he’ll find all three on the train.

He drops Dahlia’s hand, then hesitates. “James – er, thank you for everything. I’ll see you at school.”

“Running off already?” James raises a knowing brow. “Have a fun ride, Harry. Tell Tom I’m looking forward to seeing him in class.”

Harry feels a genuine smile alight on his face. “I will.”

Thick coal smoke hangs above the heads of the crowd, shifting and obscuring the glass roof of the station. Harry holds Death Star’s cage close, feeling hopeful for the first time in months. Sure, people are staring at him, and death has followed him through the rift between worlds, and he can taste burnt coal on the roof of his mouth. But he’s going to see his friends.

Soon he’ll have Tom again, solid and sharp-edged. He’ll have Pansy, grating but earnest; and Susan, bright and ruthless; and Peryle’s cutting insights. He’ll have Lyra, whose laugh buoys him through long nights of study; and Michael, with his biting wit; and arrogant, lovely Daphne, who had so grown on him over the past year. Even the thought of seeing Calcifer is enough to put a spring into Harry’s step.

Even recalling Justin’s absence can’t quite bring him down.

The train walkway is clogged with students haggling over compartments, the air thick with summer gossip and enthused reunions. Harry stands up to his full height, finding himself taller than the others. He’s a _seventh year_ , now. Funny; he’d never imagined he’d survive this long.

Harry glances into compartment windows, searching for a glimpse of his friends. He feels absurdly jumpy and light: a glimpse of Slytherin green or the merest suggestion of a dark head of hair are enough to drive his heart into a gallop.

People really are staring at him, he realizes halfway down the train. The gaggles of younger students down the hall scuttle out of his way. Conversations stutter in his wake, warping from joyous to hushed.

“ _…the one who exploded that flying machine…_ ”

“ _…Potters adopted him last winter…_ ”

“ _…Damian said he came from the past…_ ”

Old habit keeps his head held high and his expression neutral. Even now, years removed from the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry Potter knows how to deal with attention. Especially negative attention.

So of course, he doesn’t scream when he feels a finger tapping his shoulder.

“Hey, Harry, it’s okay! It’s just me,” says a bright-eyed Daphne, stifling a laugh. “Are you looking for our compartment? We’re just a few down. Tom’s been asking after you – he’ll be quite excited, I think, to see I’ve found you.”

She grabs his hand and pulls him along the length of the train. Harry wonders desperately if there is a spell to make blushes go away – he can feel heat rushing to his cheeks just at the notion that Tom has been asking after him. Which is ludicrous, of course.

Of course.

Before Harry can pull himself together, however, he and Daphne have arrived in front of a carriage absolutely bursting with Slytherin green.

Harry meets dark eyes through the window – Tom’s stood up, come up to the door. He’s wearing his hair differently – not cut it, but styled it so it curls out of his face. The sight of it does something funny to Harry’s stomach.

Tom throws open the door, lips parted, smiling like he can’t help himself. “ _Harry_.”

Embracing him is like falling, natural as gravity. Harry buries his face in Tom’s shoulder, breathing in the tart, unfamiliar scent of a new shampoo. “It’s, er. It’s good to see you.”

“You grew over the summer,” Tom says fondly. Harry feels his blush roar still brighter.

The carriage is stuffed with people: their entire Slytherin cohort save Peryle and Justin, plus Luna, Draco, Fey Crouch, and Elias Clearwater.

“I found Potter,” Daphne announces grandly, sweeping past them. Everyone inside brightens, turning to the door.

“Er, hi,” he says, returning Luna’s welcoming smile

As he finds himself a seat between Tom and Calcifer, the train shudders to life under their feet. Elias jumps up, shrugging on his school robes. “I need to go organize the prefects,” he says, flashing a Head Bay badge with no small amount of smugness. “Speaking of which – Susan, Calcifer, are you two ready?”

Susan stands, pausing to pat Harry on the shoulder. “We’ll talk later, okay?”

Harry, not quite sure what to do with the physical contact, nods mutely.

Calcifer and Draco follow her out.

“He’s the third Hufflepuff Head Boy in the last three years,” Pansy comments idly. “That must be… exciting.”

“His sister was Head Girl,” Michael adds, not looking up from his book. “Academia runs in the Clearwater family.”

Tom crosses his arms. “Everyone knows that it should have been you,” Harry whispers. “Don’t be grumpy.”

“Shut up,” Tom whispers back, but relaxes his posture.

“Wait, since when is Draco a prefect?” says Theo. A lull falls over them. “Oh, _shit_ ,” Theo says. “Fuck. Never mind.”

Harry shifts. He hadn’t even noticed Draco’s new status – but of course Ravenclaw would need a new seventh-year prefect after Henry’s death. The Head Boy badge should really have gone to _him_.

“So,” Pansy cuts the sudden awkward silence. “The Triwizard Tournament, huh? Being hosted at Hogwarts, too! That’s dreadfully exciting.”

“Daddy says one of the tasks is bound to involve outwitting a Terrible Gobsnarker,” Luna says, pulling her feet up onto the seat.

“Why are they holding it _now_ , though?” Fey asks, pointedly ignoring this contribution. “Doesn’t it seem kind of frivolous when the Ministry’s a pin’s drop away from declaring war?”

“That’s exactly the point,” says Tom, leaning forwards with a confidential air. “The Triwizard Tournament is intended to strengthen the bonds between the different factions of Wizarding Europe. Holding it just before we start up a conflict with a dangerous mutual enemy is good strategy.”

“Oh, wait, that’s actually really smart,” Pansy says. “So this way we might have allies against the Muggles?”

Harry blinks. That really _is_ smart – and it would handily explain the timing of the Tournament in his own fourth year.

“So…” Theo looks around expectantly. “Who’s going to try for Champion? I think I’m going to give it a go, myself.”

Lyra’s eyes narrow. “I think I’ll keep that to myself. Submitting one’s name seems like it should be a private matter.”

“You can’t actually be considering putting your name in,” Harry says. “Theo, Lyra, it’ll be dangerous as hell. And for what? _Glory_? No trophy is worth risking your neck like that.”

“I would’ve thought you’d be first in line,” says Theo. “You usually go all in for lunatic schemes.”

Harry returns his glare. “Trust me, Nott. It’s not worth it.”

“I don’t know about that,” Tom says before Theo can respond. He’s giving Harry a look of lazy consideration that makes his skin crawl. Had Tom’s calculating look always been this penetrating? “‘Triwizard Champion’ sounds like an excellent resume item.”

Harry slaps him gently on the arm. “Don’t be an idiot.”

For a moment, there’s something new and dangerous in Tom’s eyes.

“It’ll be interesting to meet the students from the other schools,” Fey interjects cheerfully. “I’ve heard they have quite the robust fire magic curriculum at Beauxbatons – I think we could learn so much from their delegation!”

The remainder of the train ride passes peacefully. Harry goes quiet, swept up in bittersweet nostalgia. A year from now, they’ll be graduates.

He focuses on that sensation, the strangeness of an end unfurling – anything but the jagged edges of Henry’s absence, the impending conflict, the enthusiasm generated by the Tournament, the fresh peril lurking behind Tom’s eyes.

_We’re going to be okay_ , he tells himself as they file into a thestral-drawn carriage, as they travel through the quiet of the nighttime forest, as they come into view of the great castle itself. And only then, with the lights of Hogwarts dominating the skyline, does Harry believe himself. Even if reality feels shaky and strange, he is back home.

Tom takes his hand in the darkness of the walk to the Entrance Hall. His fingers are as warm and bony as ever. Harry tilts his head back to see the stars, squeezing Tom’s hand.

The Slytherin table is unusually subdued, tense with the events of last summer. Harry sends a smile toward the group of fifth years who had once so admired his skill with the arcade machines. They look away – Melanie is missing from their ranks. She’d been in the helicopter when Harry had called down the lightning. Harry wipes his palms on his trousers, feeling frost creep up the back of his throat.

Still, there’s a burbling excitement underlying the sorrow of the Hall.

Harry remembers this feeling of anticipation from three years ago – _three years_. That’s how long it has been since he first learned about the Tournament. The thought makes him feel ancient.

In a few months, the Hall will be packed with students from three different schools. Each day will be another tick on the countdown to the next Task.

It’s a dreadful feeling. Harry can’t shake the certainty that he will, through some cruel twist of fate, end up serving as Champion yet again. He sinks onto the bench next to Tom, suddenly finding himself without an appetite.

For the first time in his life, Harry wishes he were somewhere other than Hogwarts. His guilt and fear have been horribly accentuated by this familiar place. At the same time, Tom feels like an alien presence by his side – the summer had changed him, wrought him into someone Harry can no longer fully conceptualize.

A hush falls over the room. Harry looks up to see McGonagall standing at the head of the hall, hands raised for attention. “As many of you are aware, Hogwarts will have the honor of hosting the Triwizard Tournament this year.”

The Hall erupts in excited chatter.

“But first,” McGonagall says, voice cutting effortlessly through the conversations, “we need to Sort our newest crop of first years. I ask for your silence in the interim.”

This year’s contingent of first years seems unusually small. Harry wonders if some wizarding parents had chosen to teach their children at home rather than send them out into the unforgiving wilds of Scotland.

At last, after Slytherin has welcomed a paltry nine new students, McGonagall rises, silencing the resulting clamor with a stern glare. “Now, to business. The Triwizard Tournament is an ancient wizarding tradition with a storied history. Each of the three European wizarding elects a champion from among their students, each of whom participates in a set of three tasks. The intent is to foster international relations,” she smiles slightly. “And to bring a sense of levity to times of tumult.”

Daphne, sitting across from Harry, smirks and mouths ‘times of tumult’.

“Bloody Statute of Secrecy is a breath away from shattering and _that_ ’s how she puts it?” Michael whispers.

“Hush,” Calcifer murmurs.

“The Tournament was discontinued over a century ago, in light of the excessive death toll among Champions,” McGonagall continues. “However, Minister Dumbledore has taken steps to reinstate it this year. It is his hope, as well as mine, that we can build on old traditions while maintaining a safe environment.”

To McGonagall’s right, James nods along, the picture of an attentive professor.

“In the interest of safety, only of-age students will be permitted to compete. Additional measures will be put in place during the Tasks to protect everyone, including spectators, from any unfortunate accidents.”

“They had a string of Tournaments that had to end after the second task because only one of the Champions was left alive,” Tom explains softly, mouth curving in restrained glee.

“Academics will be proceeding as usual,” McGonagall continues sternly. “This is particularly relevant for our N.E.W.T. students – just because one of your classmates will be participating gives no one license to slack off. Extracurriculars, however, will be disrupted by the Tournament. Specifically, this year’s Quidditch season is to be suspended.”

“Oh _shit_ ,” Harry says loudly. The profanity is lost in the roar of the rest of the Hall, though – Ginny, halfway down the Slytherin table, is on her feet, shouting. The Gryffindor table erupts into a tumult of angry faces; Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw don’t seem much happier.

Harry swears he sees McGonagall roll her eyes. She snaps her fingers loudly, and the four tables suddenly groan under the weight of dinner. “The decision’s made. No need to kick up a fuss now. Eat up.”

Some of the Gryffindors look on the edge of catapulting mashed potatoes into the Headmistress’s face, but the allure of the food proves to be too much.

“Sorry, Harry,” says Susan.

“I should have seen this coming,” Harry says gloomily, spooning curry onto his plate. “I just need a moment to grieve.”

He’s half-joking, but the others leave him alone for the remainder of dinner.

It’s a mutedly hopeful group of Slytherins that file down to the dungeons – despite everything, the announcement of the Tournament does seem to have lifted everyone’s spirits.

The common room is as chilly as ever, filled with damp echoes and murky light. Harry feels himself relax as they step inside – how strange, that he feels more at home under the lake than in the airy Great Hall.

Tom leads them towards the grand fireplace, where the largest armchair looms vacant and spectacular. Harry remembers two years ago to the day, watching George Weasley claim that spot, lounging like a king in the warmth of the fire.

Reverently, Tom sits. Lit from underneath by the flames, his triumphant smile seems an inhuman thing.

He meets Harry’s eyes, arranging his legs in casual invitation: asking Harry to sit in his lap. Harry looks away, embarrassed, and claims a seat on a nearby couch. Lyra settles next to him, chattering brightly about an enchanted music box she’d found in a closet.

“It tried to hypnotize me,” she says, sinking back into the cushions. “I think it might have some soul-sucking capabilities, but Father wouldn’t let me test that theory… anyway, I’ve befriended it. It’s in my trunk if you want to take a look later.”

“Just so long as you promise not to let it suck my soul out.”

“Oh, you’ll be fine! Tom gave it quite the stern talking-to. I think most of its bloodlust is gone.”

Harry stiffens. He finds himself suddenly, irrationally, jealous. “So… the Tournament, huh? Are you really going to put in your name, or were you just trying to spoil Theo’s fun?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Lyra considers him calculatingly. “Why are you so against any of us giving it a shot? Are you trying to weed out the competition, make it more likely that _you_ get chosen?”

“I wouldn’t do that, Lyra. You know me.”

“Do I?” Her eyes are glacial slivers in the muted firelight.

He’s so tired of Slytherins. “I’m heading in for the night,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Oh – Harry, I didn’t mean it like that –”

Harry stands, shrugging off her hand on his shoulder. “I know. It’s just been a long day. I’ve got the worst headache.” He tries to smile.

Pansy looks up, concern written in lines on her forehead. “Ly, look what you’ve done.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Harry tells her weakly. “I’m just… tired, that’s all. You know how it is.”

“You don’t want to stick around and bask in the glory of having reached seventh year?” Pansy asks incisively. “Tom’s been looking forward to this. He’ll miss you.”

At the sound of his name, Tom looks up from his conversation with Calcifer. “Is something the matter?”

“Headache,” Harry says. “I’ll see you all in the morning, okay?”

“Of course,” says Tom, eyes narrowing. There’s an unfamiliar ring on his finger, glinting with cold pewter light. “Take care of yourself.”

Lyra and Pansy subside, letting Harry slip away into the shadows and find his way to his and Tom’s room. He pulls on his pajamas and burrows into bed, barely holding off the temptation to fall asleep as the ram. Transforming when his emotions are in such disarray could be dangerous – while the ram feels less deeply than Harry, it also has less reservations about causing property damage.

Just as he’s drifting into the twilight between sleeping and waking, the door clicks open. “Harry?”

“Hgnnnrphh.” Harry pulls his pillow over his head and rolls onto his stomach.

“We need to talk.” Tom’s boots clomp torturously over the stone of their bedroom floor. “Come on, Harry. Don’t be difficult. You know I’ll dump you onto the floor if I have to.”

“B’stard,” Harry mumbles into the mattress.

“My parents were married, actually,” Tom says crisply. “I learned all sorts of interesting facts this summer.”

Harry flails, trying to hit him with his pillow, and misses.

“I warned you.” The half-teasing danger in Tom’s voice is enough to bring Harry fully into wakefulness.

He lashes out with a foot, but sits up, glaring. “Fine. Happy?”

Wincing and rubbing his side, Tom says, “not really, no. What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

“Gee, I wonder,” says Harry. “It’s almost like my brother died and I spent months wandering around a mourning house, trying to keep Geoffrey from hurting himself.”

“All while pining inconsolably for your displaced boyfriend.”

“Oh, fuck _off_.”

“You know something about the Tournament, don’t you? Theo was right: it’s unusual for you to display such a… passion for safety.”

Harry grabs his glasses from his bedside table and runs a hand through his mussed hair. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“I _am_ on to something, then?”

“You’re too perceptive for your own good.”

“Harry, you’re not half as subtle as you think you are.” Tom purses his lips, sitting on the edge of his bed and pulling off his outer robes. “Am I correct in the assumption that you witnessed a Triwizard Tournament at some point?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, rubbing at the prickling un-speak seal on the back of his neck. “Not sure how much more I’m going to be able to tell you.”

“Huh. So why are you opposed to the Tournament? Was one of your friends was injured in a task?”

“I’m not opposed to the Tournament. I just think being a Champion is an enormous risk, and I don’t want anyone I care about to take on that risk.”

“One of your friends… was a Champion?”

“You underestimate my bad luck.”

“ _You_ were a Champion?”

Harry’s lip twists in acknowledgement.

Tom whistles in appreciation. “Did you win?”

“What do you take me for?”

“Well _done_ , Potter. At, what, no older than fourteen? That’s bloody impressive.” There’s a glint in his eyes.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“What?”

“Come on, Tom. You’re too smart to enter your name.”

“Oh, go to sleep, my Champion. We can talk it through in the morning.”

Harry blushes, thoughts entirely derailed. “I – ‘ _my Champion_ ’?”

“Hush.”

“Oh, fine… hey, Tom?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s good to see you. I really missed you.”

Tom clears his throat, looking pleased. “Likewise, Harry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter I'm posting this hell-year! What a weird feeling. Fun fact: writing this fic was actually my 2020 new year's resolution.


	28. The Goblet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new year begins -- as does the Triwizard Tournament.

Harry wakes up to the familiar, biting chill of the Slytherin common room. He yawns and pulls his feet under the covers.

“Good morning,” he rasps at the lump of blanket atop the other bed.

The lump stirs, a bony white hand emerging and pulling away the blanket to reveal bleary eyes and a head of sleep-mussed hair. Tom stretches, pushing himself almost off the bed.

“You should stop growing,” Harry notes, sitting up against his headboard. “The Hogwarts beds were built for people, not flagpoles.”

Tom looks torn between amusement and offence. “Why did I _miss_ you?”

“My sparkling wit and gorgeous face.”

“I’m rubbing off on you, I think.”

Harry smiles, chest feeling full of warmth and fireflies. “Maybe you are.”

Tom sits up, socked feet falling to the floor. It’s been months since Harry’s seen him like this, vulnerable with the lingering fog of sleep, edges rounded away for the precious few minutes before he fully wakes.

The ring on his right index finger catches in the murky green light filtering through their windows from the lake. Harry finds himself captivated by the glint, the sparkle of the black stone set into it, the thick silvery band holding tight to Tom’s finger.

“The ring’s new,” he says uncertainly. “A gift from the Blacks?”

“No,” says Tom. “A present from my grandfather, actually.”

Harry swallows anxiously. “Okay, then. You want to, uh, maybe elaborate on that?”

Tom’s brows contract. All his sleepy softness has dissolved. Harry feels the cold of the dungeon more profoundly than ever. “It was hidden away in my grandfather’s gravestone, in the town where my family used to live. I think it must be some kind of family heirloom.”

Cautiously, Harry holds out a hand. “Can I see?”

Tom gets up and sits next to Harry to offer up his right hand. Harry rubs his thumb along the side of his hand, feeling the ridges of the time travel scars, before turning his attention to the ring. “No snake or anything,” he notes. “Is this Grindelwald’s mark…?”

“I think so,” Tom says. “I don’t know what it means.”

“It’s cold.” Harry taps the stone in accusation. “Is that uncomfortable?”

“I’m getting used to it,” Tom says.

Harry hums, leaning into him.

Tom frees his hand so he can place his arm around Harry’s shoulders.

“It hurt to be away so long,” Harry murmurs. “I didn’t think it would hurt so much as it did.”

There’s a beat of silence. Tom is warm and still against him. “Harry, what sort of Dark Lord was I?”

“ _Tom_ ,” Harry wriggles out of his grip. “I can’t answer that – why would you even _ask_ that?”

He shrugs. “Was I… was I good at it?”

“ _Good_ at it?”

“I mean, did I make things better? For Dark wizards? For the creatures of the woods?”

“Tom.”

“Harry, I wouldn’t be asking if this weren’t important.”

“No, Tom. You were a shit Dark Lord. You – _he_ – he was fucking insane.” Harry tries to say more, tries to say _he wasn’t human anymore. He tortured his followers for sport. His plans were rambling, incoherent messes. He was the worst bigot of them all_. The brand cuts him off. “Didn’t you see him in my mind?”

“He was sort of… reptilian, wasn’t he?” Tom asks dispassionately.

“And you don’t want that for yourself, do you, Tom? We can’t have our dear Slytherin king losing his pretty face.”

It’s meant to be a joke, but Tom’s face screws up dangerously. He looks bothered, but not at the thought of looking like a monster.

“Tom?”

He flinches.

“What… what happened this summer?”

“I have a nephew,” Tom says, looking away.

“Wait, _what_? How?”

“I wasn’t an orphan at all. My father died just fifteen years ago – he was alive for my entire childhood. He remarried, had at least one other kid…”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Harry reaches for his hand again, confused. “You have family. Why are you –”

“They’re _Muggles_ , Harry, not family. How could they be family – they didn’t know I _existed_. The man whose name I inherited – whose _face_ I inherited – he abandoned my mother to a slow, painful death on the streets of London. He left me to grow up stunted and lonely. And he was rich. He was _rich_ , Harry – he had this horrible fancy tombstone, he lived in a great mansion…”

“You don’t know his circumstances,” Harry says reasonably, squeezing Tom’s hand. “He might not have known that your mother was pregnant. Maybe they had an argument and she left him. I mean, wizard-Muggle relationships can be difficult sometimes, right? For all we know, he spent years heartbroken before finally remarrying.”

“He did wait at least a decade,” Tom concedes. “Probably longer, based on – uh.”

“Based on what?”

“A picture of him I saw.”

Harry waits.

“I told you about the nephew, right? Cal and I met him. I, ah, may have used Legilimency on him.”

“Oh,” Harry says. “Okay.”

“You’re not – frustrated with me?”

Harry considers his emotional state. “Nah. Maybe I should be, but nah.”

Tom looks troubled. “Are you… _okay_ , Harry? I know I’m normally not a fan of your moral hang-ups, but…”

“I don’t know,” Harry admits. “I honestly don’t think I am. Ever since Henry died, I’ve had trouble feeling things as… deeply.”

“Oh, Harry.”

“I’ll be okay. It’s been getting better, I think – I’m more worried about _you_.”

Tom swallows.

“Tell me about your father.”

“He – I saw his grave, Harry. It had my name on it. And in the picture I saw, he looked _just like me_. And now he’s dead.”

What was it that Tom had said in his letter? _I feel like my father’s ghost_.

Tom pinches the skin around his eyes. “I can’t stand to look at myself in the mirror lately. My face doesn’t feel like my own.”

“So the ‘don’t turn into an evil, ugly snake-man’ argument isn’t working for you anymore…?”

He laughs brokenly. “Harry – no. I can… I can see the appeal in such an appearance, now. The Dark Mantle is said to confer Metamorphmagic abilities; I think it’s likely he _chose_ that face for himself.”

“Huh,” Harry says. “Y’know, Tom, when I call you beautiful –”

“You’ve never once called me beautiful,” Tom interrupts.

“Well, maybe I should start,” Harry says, neck heating. “You’re beautiful, Tom.”

Tom blinks.

“But for me, at least, that has nothing to do with your face, or magic, or… whatever else.”

“That’s who I _am_ , though,” Tom says. “My physical self, my abilities. Those are the things that make up a person.”

“Nah,” says Harry. “You’re more than that: you’re someone who knows how to make me laugh. You’re vicious, and clever, and _brave_.”

Tom’s mouth twists.

“No – no, _seriously_. You get so caught up in the past, so obsessed with legacy – but none of that is _you_. Even divorced from your family history – _especially_ divorced from your family history – you are wonderful.

“We’ve been through hell together, Tom, and there’s no one else I’d rather have beside me. That night outside the Room of Requirement, before we met… do you know what I was thinking about? I was pacing up and down the hall, just – just wishing for someone who could _understand_ me. Wishing for someplace other than my relatives’ house to spend the summer. And then that door appeared, and on the other side, I saw _you_.”

“I was thinking something very similar,” says Tom, expression going sharp with interest. “It’s as if the Room connected across time, fulfilled both our desires at once.”

Harry smiles, reaching for Tom’s scarred hand. “See? We were meant to find each other. Your – your _face_ has nothing to do with that.”

Tom raises an eyebrow in apparent boredom, but he’s lightly flushed. “So, you _don’t_ think I’m pretty?”

“You –” Harry chokes on laughter. “You’re the most handsom person I’ve ever met.”

Tom’s pleased hum is cut off as Harry, unable to restrain himself another moment, lunges up to kiss him. Tom melts, hands going to the base of Harry’s skull, and his mouth is warm and familiar and gentle, and both of them are gross with morning breath –

Harry breaks away, feeling suddenly sick with guilt.

“Did I do something wrong?” Tom disentangles himself, biting his lip distractingly.

“I kissed Malfoy,” Harry blurts.

“Oh. Wait, what –? _Why_?”

He shrugs helplessly. “It wasn’t, like, on purpose.”

“On purpose… like the time _I_ kissed him?” Tom asks, looking unimpressed.

“I mean.” Harry shifts, wanting to reach for Tom again. “Yeah?”

“I’m trying very hard not to be jealous right now,” Tom says. “Do you… d’you think you’ll do it again?”

Harry looks up sharply. “Fuck, no. I promise you I have _zero_ romantic interest in Draco Malfoy.”

“ _Good_ ,” Tom says. “I want to make him one of our lieutenants. It would be a shame to have to kill him.”

He sounds a bit _too_ serious; Harry can’t quite muster up a smile for him.

“Are you going to kiss me again?” Tom asks, leaning forward, all sharp smile and dark eyes.

Harry finds, to his disappointment, that he does not in fact want to kiss him again. “Tom… when you become Dark Lord in this world, what do you plan to do with that power?”

Tom frowns. “Why do people keep asking me that?”

“It’s an important question,” Harry says through an incredulous laugh. “Come on, Tom –”

Tom’s face falls. “I don’t know, Harry,” he whispers.

Harry has never seen him so uncertain.

“I’m starting to think I don’t even want that power. And from what I know of your world, I’m not worthy of it, anyway.”

Harry shifts closer.

“It’s my destiny, though,” Tom says. “I can think of few who –” He pauses, a strange expression creeping across his face.

“Tom?”

Tom puts an arm around him. The cold of the band on his finger burns through Harry’s pajama shirt.

“Is something the matter?”

“No.” His face, when Harry looks up at it, is shuttered and pensive. “Nothing’s the matter.”

Murky green light shines through their window and pools at the top of the door, shifting and delicate.

“I’ve been thinking, lately… if I must do something with the power, I will use it to protect the Forest. I suppose.”

“I see,” Harry says, relieved. “That sounds… good. We’ll survive this year, graduate, wait for Dumbledore to bite the dust, then serve the Forest. Together.”

Tom reaches up to run his fingers through Harry’s hair, scratching at the scalp. Harry leans into the contact, sighing. “No war,” Tom murmurs. “No more death. We’ll be okay.”

_You know I don’t like it when you lie_ , Harry can’t make himself say. Instead, he says, “can I kiss you?”

“ _Please_ ,” Tom says, and then Harry is climbing into his lap and pinning him against the headboard, and Tom is laughing into his mouth, and Harry feels the soul-deep ache of the lonely summer start to fade.

Eventually there’s a knock at the door, and Calcifer’s voice says, “we’re all heading to breakfast, if you two want to come along?”

And then Daphne: “get a move on, lovebirds!”

But for a few moments, everything is perfect.

***

Monday classes pass smoothly enough: Harry has Charms, Transfiguration, and Potions.

He comes out the other end laden with essays and spells to practice, head spinning with Iberian antidotes and Figdelt’s Theory of Vocal Inheritance. Even Tom, always so academically unflappable, seems caught off guard by the heavy workload – Harry catches him frowning with Calcifer over a diagram for Ancient Runes, looking as close as Harry has ever seen him to _perplexed_.

Harry can’t concentrate on his Transfiguration essay for Lupin, so preoccupied is he by the looming threat of the next day: they have Dark Studies and Defense, one after the other.

Snape and James, each of whom is furious with Tom for completely valid reasons.

So Harry fidgets all through breakfast. He chews vengefully on his toast, sends suspicious glares up to the Head Table, and sits with his whole side pressed protectively up against Tom.

“You’re ridiculous,” Tom tells him. He’s just as on-edge, though – Harry knows he only drinks caffeinated tea when he’s trying to brace himself for something.

Harry grunts and takes a swig of orange juice. “I’m glad Dahlia’s in Hufflepuff.” He nods toward her, seated at the end of the table and surrounded by a vanguard of protectors.

Tom steals a grape from Harry’s plate, scowling. “I had to do it.”

“You didn’t have to go to _Rita Skeeter_ , of all people.”

“Do you have a history with her?”

Harry grunts again.

From the Head Table, Snape watches them impassively.

***

“Well, _that_ was a disaster,” says Theo as depart their first Dark Studies class of the year. “Tom, O Great One, who I would never dare to question – with all due respect, what the fuck?”

“What?” Tom glares. “It’s not my fault the dingbat was feeling vindictive.”

“He took a total of eighteen House points from you, Tom,” Lyra says, gesturing to an inky tally on her arm. “Look, I kept track. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a teacher deduct… _any_ points from you. Ever. Let alone because you – how did he phrase it, Cal?”

“‘Sitting impertinently’,” Calcifer says. “‘Insufficient eye contact’ – I mean, you were taking notes, what did he expect? – not mentioning that one particular obscure case study in your explanation of Bernoulli artifacts… and then he took five points for _not_ raising your hand to answer a follow-up? Ridiculous.”

“What did you _do_ , Tom?” Theo asks. “I mean, normally I’d say he was just irritable over his salacious love affair going public – but that was _targeted_ fury. He was spending more time going after you than actually, like, teaching.”

Tom purses his lips. He looks almost guilty. “Those two events might, in fact, be correlated.”

“Tom was Skeeter’s anonymous tip,” Lyra explains brightly. “Really, Theo, where do you think she got her information?”

Theo whistles. “Damn, Tom, no wonder the Potters kicked you out.”

Calcifer and Lyra both stiffen; they’re looking, Harry realizes, at Tom. They look almost – _scared_.

Tom’s face is blank, carefully so, in a way that communicates rage far better than his usual mild glares. “Do go on, Theodore. But choose your words carefully.”

“I, uh.” Theo has gone very pale. “I understand now why Snape was angry with you. Good job, uh, showing him who’s boss. Really impressive, that. We’re lucky to have such an honorable, cunning leader.”

A muscle below Tom’s eye twitches.

“Anyway,” Harry says with false cheer, linking his arm with Theo’s. “I’m _hungry_. Let’s go get some lunch, yeah? I’m hoping they still have some blackberry scones left over from breakfast. One of those sounds _delicious_ right now.”

Theo lets Harry manhandle him down the hall. “Thanks,” he mutters.

“Why are you so… so _sassy_ to Tom? You know that’s the equivalent of throwing rocks at a sleeping dragon.”

“Can’t help myself,” Theo says. “I like the face he makes…”

“Yeah, I like the face he makes, too.” Harry sighs. “How ‘bout you leave the nettling to me, though? He won’t flay _me_. You, on the other hand –”

“He’ll kill me dead, yeah, I know. I just didn’t think that was, like, literal.”

“Tom had a rough summer,” Harry says. “Just don’t antagonize him and you’ll be fine. It’s not hard to just… show basic respect.”

“Yeah.” Theo wilts. “Thanks, Harry. I need to work on my filter.”

Harry smiles despite himself. “Sure thing, bud.”

“ _Bud_?”

Harry just laughs.

***

Harry walks into the first Defense class of the day armed with a napkin-wrapped scone in one hand and Tom’s sleeve in the other.

“I don’t think he’s _that_ mad at you,” Harry says as they idle in front of the classroom door.

From behind them, Daphne says, “are you two ever going to go in? Professor Potter doesn’t bite.” She pauses thoughtfully, then adds, “and he can’t hex you maliciously. It’s illegal for a teacher to do that to a student. Hogwarts herself would probably shield you or something.”

“ _He_ might not be mad at me, but his wife certainly is,” Tom says grimly.

Harry steels himself. “Lily’s not here right now,” he says firmly. “We can do this.”

“Easy for you to say,” Tom protests, wincing as Harry reaches for the doorknob. “You’re his son –”

Harry throws the door open and he quiets, expression blanking.

Lavender, Neville, and Ron are already in class, talking idly.

James sits on his desk. As the Slytherins pour in after Tom and Harry, he looks up, grin is blinding.

“Tom!” he calls, holding out his hands. “It’s been too long, kiddo.”

Tom freezes by Harry’s side, face gone slack, eyes curiously bright. Harry pushes him forward gently, and Tom spills down the hall into James’s arms.

Harry takes a seat between Susan and Lyra to watch the exchange. James has released Tom, smiling through the gray in his beard.

“I don’t understand,” Susan says softly. “I thought there was tension there.”

Harry shrugs, beaming. “There was. Doesn’t mean they don’t care about each other, though.”

Another few minutes pass as the rest of the class makes their way to their seats, and eventually Tom returns to their table, muttering a spell under his breath.

Harry leans forward. “That went well, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What spell was that?”

“ _Siccum oculi_.”

“Okay… what does it do?”

“Eliminates extraneous liquid from the eyes.” He looks embarrassed; Harry decides not to needle him.

“Well done patching up relations with Potter,” Lyra tells Tom, a nefarious glint in her eyes.

“Thanks,” Tom says, sounding rightfully wary.

“It’s advisable to be on good terms with someone whose kid you want to marry.”

Harry nearly chokes on his own spit.

“Marry?” Tom says. “Lyra, dear, we’re _seventeen_.”

“Wizards usually marry soon after we graduate,” Susan says. “It’s a pureblood tradition that’s become a cultural standard.”

Harry eyes Tom. “Nope,” he says.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Tom has the gall to look offended. “Who _else_ are you going to marry?”

“ _No one_ ,” Harry says. “Like you just said! We’re seventeen! We’ve been dating, what, six months?”

Tom scowls. “Almost nine months, actually.”

Harry does the math. “Closer to eight. And we spent like three of them separated.”

“ _Harry_.” The scowl melts into a pout.

“You’re messing with me,” Harry realizes, laughing. “You had me for a moment there, not gonna lie.”

Tom smirks.

“You two are bizarre,” Susan says.

Up at the front of the classroom, James hops up from his desk, bringing them all to attention with a wave of his hand.

“Welcome to your N.E.W.T. year!” he says with an expansive gesture. “Let’s get moving. We have a lot of material to cover.”

Harry straightens in his seat, opening his new textbook.

“More importantly,” James says, expression going grim. “I’ll be training you all to survive – and how to _protect each other_ – in wartimes. There will be no more casualties among you, not if I have anything to say about it.”

***

Harry and Tom take over Henry’s study group, at least in spirit. The soul of the gathering is irrevocably changed without Henry. More even than his absence, the nature of his death hangs over them like a shroud.

There is war coming. And the others – they’re just _kids_. They weren’t raised for this, not in the way Harry and Tom were.

Hence the current situation: Harry standing before them, having delivered a short speech echoing James’s words about protection and survival. “So,” he finishes, trying to imitate Henry’s winning smile. “All in favor of acting like a real study group, rather than a social gathering?”

“Say ‘aye’,” Tom adds helpfully from his plush armchair.

There’s a chorus of confused ‘aye’s. Tom looks very pleased.

“Good,” Harry says, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Right.”

He looks over the others, feeling his resolve falter. His joking about ‘militias’ had never felt so real.

“Not everyone here is taking advanced Defense,” Tom says, standing. “In the current climate, however, it’s dangerous to lack a strong command of defensive magic. Our main goal, therefore, will be to equip as many people as possible with a foundation they can use to protect themselves on the battlefield. Bring everyone you can from your Houses, and those of us in N.E.W.T. Defense will tutor them.”

“All of the seventh year Slytherins will probably attend,” Calcifer says.

Hermione and Draco exchange a loaded glance. “I’ll bring the lower year Ravenclaws,” Draco says. Hermione’s lips thin.

“The rest of the Gryffindors will jump at the chance to get some more hands-on experience,” offers Ron. Neville nods eagerly.

“I’m on board,” Parvati says. “And I’ll talk to my friends in Hufflepuff about it.”

Tom smiles. “Excellent.”

“Wait, where are we going to be meeting for these new sessions?” asks Dean. “This room can’t accommodate that many more people.”

“The Room of Requirement,” Harry says.

Hermione’s eyebrows shoot up. “That’s a _brilliant_ idea.”

Harry grimaces, itching at the scars on his right hand. He thinks it’s a _dangerous_ idea, but Tom is adamant.

Neville frowns. “Room of _what_? I’ve never heard of that.”

“It’ll be easier to just show you,” says Tom. “We’ll have our first meeting next Thursday after dinner. Tell all interested parties to meet near the seventh-floor stairwell, and we’ll collect them.”

And with that, they settle into a routine. Agonizing over their enormous workloads during the week, recruiting and planning lessons on weekends, and wrangling the study group on Thursday afternoons. The study group is enormous, too – half of Slytherin attends, not to mention the other Houses.

Harry puts himself in charge of the sixth and seventh years, with Luna and Peryle as his aids. A grumbling Tom agrees to handle the younger years, assisted by Calcifer, Lyra, and Draco.

The first lesson goes relatively smoothly for Harry. He organizes everyone in groups of three, then has them practice defending in a two-on-one scenario. They break for a critique, then transition into three-on-three battles.

It’s fun to see the sheer ingenuity of some of the upper years: Daphne’s wind magic and Jonathan Tonks’s talent for material Transfigurations is a terrifying combination, while Padma Patil’s use of an arcane brick-laying spell to erect barriers proves astoundingly effective.

Of course, some are less impressive. Harry has Peryle and Susan individually tutor Stephen Cornfoot and little Jazzy Bulstrode, respectively. Pansy, too, struggles; for all her wit, she seems to have trouble anticipating incoming spells.

Harry wraps up the first lesson with a sense of optimism. He’s surprised to meet Tom’s eyes and see, rather than reflected eagerness, a deep exhaustion – and a lock of his perfectly groomed hair on fire, deep blue smudges on his favorite red shirt, and a cloud of irritated locusts swarming around his head.

“ _I’m_ teaching the upper years next time,” Tom says forbiddingly.

Harry cares just enough for his boyfriend’s delicate ego not to laugh. “Sure thing,” he says instead, and conjures a jet of water to put out the tiny fire.

Most of it hits Tom in the face. He sputters and ducks away, feigning affront, but Harry can see the edge of a smile on his face even before an irritable Calcifer swoops in with a drying spell.

“Look at you, you’re all fluffy,” Harry says as they return to the dungeons, reaching up to feel Tom’s hair.

Tom grumbles, but lets him touch.

The weeks roll steadily onwards. Harry teaches the younger kids, and though they are more challenging to work with than his peers, he finds more success than Tom had.

“How the hell did you manage _that_?” Tom asks in early October, watching a five-on-five match Harry has organized between his third years.

“Patience,” says Harry drily. “Nice shot, Jay! Alyssa, remember your stance. Your casting is solid, but you’ll have trouble dodging if – oh. Yeah, if that happens. You’ve learned your lesson for next time, though, yeah?”

Meanwhile, their actual Defense class has become impossibly more difficult. James arranges with Headmistress McGonagall to add additional class time into the seventh years’ schedules, so they meet for class five days a week rather than two.

“Should we tell him about our dodgy Defense meetings?” Susan asks, rubbing at a bruise on her elbow. “Maybe he wouldn’t push us so hard if he knew we’re getting practical experience on the side.”

“Secrecy is the best policy,” says Tom.

“That’s objectively false,” Harry says – but he knows it’s pointless to fight Tom on that, and in all honesty part of him agrees. Adults have never helped him, even in this timeline. Their meddling drove he and Tom apart this summer, and their inaction had led to Henry’s death all those long months ago.

These days, they have less time to spend wandering the looping roads of the Forest. The separation from the woods itches at Harry, building deep inside him until he decides it’s worth skipping out on a night of sleep to go on a moonlit romp through the trees.

Tom takes it worse. Too often, Harry finds him standing in strange corners of Hogwarts, staring out the window, hand resting over his heart. “I was just chatting with the Gray Lady,” he’ll say as an excuse, or “Look, the wood in this stairwell is different than elsewhere in the castle. It’s _cedar_. Isn’t that strange, Harry?”

“Is your heart hurting you?” Harry asks after nearly a month of this, when he finds Tom curled up in one of the library windows, looking out into the woods with _Beast Husbandry Laws in the United Kingdom: A Comprehensive History_ open on his lap.

Tom tears his eyes away from the window, but they still look so far away. “I think it’s growing. The prosthetic, that is.”

Harry makes a soft noise of worry.

“Not in a way that hurts me,” Tom says. “But it’s doing… more. More than just helping my heart to beat.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Harry admits.

Tom hums noncommittally, then closes his book and rests it on the ground. “Nothing to be done for it now.” He holds out his arms.

“Is this your way of asking me for a kiss?”

He nods, looking so momentarily soft that Harry can’t help but curl up in the window with him. He presses a tiny kiss to the hinge of Tom’s jaw, then turns around.

Tom grunts in surprised protest.

“Hush,” Harry says. “’M not in a kissing mood. Just snuggles.”

They fall asleep like that, Tom’s breath tickling the back of Harry’s head and his arms wrapped loosely around his chest. It’s worth the embarrassment of Madam Pince finding them after dark and kicking them out into the hall.

“This is ridiculous,” Tom says, rubbing grit out of his eyes as they start the long, cold trek down to the dungeons. “When I’m in charge, I’m going to make a rule against waking students from well-deserved naps.”

They’re walking quickly; they’ve only six minutes left before curfew hits. “I’ll remember to cover us in the Cloak next time,” Harry promises fondly.

“We’re going to be making a habit of illicit naps, then?”

“If I have anything to say on the matter? Absolutely.”

Tom takes his hand, beaming. “ _Saucy_.”

Harry laughs, feeling younger and more hopeful than he has since Henry’s death.

***

Reality hits them with all the force of a pegasus-drawn carriage on October 30th, as – well, as a pegasus-drawn carriage descends on the Hogwarts grounds.

Harry watches grimly as the Beauxbatons contingent files out: a dozen or so seventh years, all looking around themselves with a mixture of curiosity and challenging appraisal. In his memory, they had seemed so old and worldly – but simultaneously pitiful. They hadn’t dressed for the cold, he remembers. They’d shivered in the Scottish autumn, puffing into their freezing cold hands and murmuring in subdued French.

There’s none of that now. It’s an unseasonably warm afternoon, to the point that Harry feels stifled by the thick wool of his own cloak. The Beauxbatons kids seem neither worldly nor pitiful. Just kind of arrogant.

Beside him, Tom arches his neck, tensing a muscle in his jaw. It’s an expression Harry is used to seeing on the unicorn’s face: recognition of a challenger, assertion of his own power. Harry throws an arm around his waist, laughing softly.

“What?” Tom asks, the fight going out of him.

“You’re cute,” says Harry.

Tom goes abruptly red. “Shut up.”

“If you get too caught up in sizing up the Beauxbatons students, you’ll miss Durmstrang’s big entrance.”

Tom’s expression sharpens once more, and he starts scanning the sky.

“The lake,” Harry tells him, amused.

A couple of minutes go by, filled with speculative whispers and restless stirring. When the first bubbles churn the surface of the lake, Tom bounces a little in excitement, smiling down at Harry. Harry pinches him teasingly in the side.

Farther from the in the crowd of black-cloaked Hogwarts students, a call of excitement goes up. Someone’s spotted the same thing they have: the bubbling lake, and now the mast rising from it.

More students shout as the rest of the boat emerges from the Black Lake, sending up a cloud of welcome mist. A younger Gryffindor even starts clapping, like he’s at the circus, then stops as he realizes no one else is joining in.

“I hate to compliment our bitter rivals-to-be,” Tom says, “but that is a _really_ impressive piece of magic. I wonder, is the ship itself an artifact? How do you think it got to the lake? Transportation magic tends to be based in fire and air. I’ve never heard of a technique that would let something so large teleport via _water_ , of all things. How fascinating.”

The Durmstrang contingent also differs from Harry’s memory. As a fourth-year, he had thought they looked for all the word like a group of bear cubs, built beefy and vicious, swaddled in thick furs. He sees now that he was mistaken – from afar they look large, but only as a byproduct of their bulky school uniforms.

“Why don’t _we_ get to wear capes?” he asks, watching enviously as a girl near the front of the group rearranges the furred padding around her shoulders.

“Hmmph,” Tom says. He’s making the posturing-unicorn expression again.

It’s strange to see the Tournament begin again, to feel the same buzz of excitement on the air, while looking around and seeing that everything is ever so slightly _off_.

Everyone allows themselves to be herded into the Great Hall for the night’s feast.

There’s a brief scuffle as the visitors tried to decide where to sit. The entirety of the Durmstrang delegation ends up at Gryffindor – Harry watches fondly as Ron greets them, all bright hair and freckled cheeks. Beauxbatons, however, splits into smaller groups. A pair of boys approach the Slytherin table, honing in on the seventh-year cohort.

“Might we sit with you?” the shorter of the two asks in lightly accented English. He seems to have realized Tom is the one in charge, for the question is directed towards him.

Tom smiles in that cold, smug way he has, and Harry has to hold himself back from elbowing him. “Certainly. My name’s Tom Riddle. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Omar Bisset,” said the short boy, sitting between Pansy and Michael. “And this is my friend Julien Dubois.”

The rest of the Slytherins make their introductions, but are spared any more small talk by McGonagall standing and gesturing for the Hall’s attention.

She makes a speech remarkably similar to the one Dumbledore had made precisely three years ago: about unity, and togetherness. About the perseverance of wizardkind, her faith in the younger generation.

And then she nods toward the great wooden doors of the Hall, and Professor Sinistra walks in holding the Goblet of Fire, unlit and as battered with age as Harry remembers. Madame Maxime hovers behind her – Harry had missed her disembarking the carriage. How strange to see her again. He wonders if she knows Hagrid in this world, if the two of them might still be friends.

McGonagall walks forward to meet the two other women in the dead center of the Hall. Over the heads of the Ravenclaws, Harry watches her conjure a tall, ornate table that puts him in mind of a footstool. With reverence, Sinistra places the Goblet down.

A confused murmur passes through the room. “That’s the Goblet of Fire?” Tom asks Harry lowly. “Not very impressive, is it? I was hoping for something a bit more… well, fiery.”

“Be patient,” Harry whispers.

The lights in the Hall dim ever so slightly, candle flames shrinking as though robbed of oxygen. A full-body shiver ripples through Harry. He is aware now, in a way he hadn’t been as a child, of how _old_ the Tournament is. He’d taken part in an ancient tradition three years ago, tarnished by Voldemort or no. Looking back, he’s almost honored.

Every student in the Hall is silent now, so quiet that McGonagall’s inhale can be heard all the way from the Slytherin table.

“Now begins the Triwizard Tournament,” the Headmistress says, and from her mouth it sounds like an incantation.

The Goblet flares to life. It fills with flames of such vibrant blue that Harry’s molars ache, dancing with frenetic energy.

The silence stretches onward for another beat, then dissipates in a burst of excited chatter. Friends exchange cries of delight between House tables, younger children look to the seventeen-year-olds with admiration and curiosity, and that particularly passionate Gryffindor starts another round of applause. This time, some of his peers join in.

For a moment, Harry feels strangely content with the situation – the Tournament will be dangerous as hell, but he’ll just be an observer. Maybe the tasks will even be fun to watch. Maybe this year will be something other than a misery of stress, spending every other moment worrying over the next impossible competition.

Then Harry sees Tom’s face, lined with a kind of desperate yearning.

No, this will not be a stressless year. Nothing in Harry’s ridiculous life could ever be so simple.

***

Tom sits in his customary armchair, trying to look casual and coolly handsome – trying to look like he’s not about to vibrate out of his skin with excitement. The sheer volume of magic that he’d felt buzzing through the Great Hall that afternoon, the students from other countries, the thought of getting to show his worth in front of a stadium of people – it all feels so suddenly _real_.

Twenty-four hours to make his decision: put his name in the Cup and risk Harry’s wrath, or never know whether he had the potential to be champion.

It reminds him of a similar dilemma from months ago. The Potter name or the mysterious legacy of his mother’s family? His choice then had ended with a gravestone marked _Tom Riddle_ and the deathly cold band of the ring on his index finger.

Still, whenever Tom thinks about _not_ submitting his name, he feels sick. He keeps imagining his classmates competing, _winning_ , being awarded laurels and glory and – oh, this is just getting silly. He’s thinking like a Gryffindor.

He doesn’t need glory or recognition. He has exactly what he needs right here. Quite literally, in fact. Harry has, just tonight, finally deigned to sit on his lap in public.

This is a very good arrangement. Tom gets to put his hand on Harry’s waist and his chin on Harry’s head. He gets to feel the vibration of Harry’s voice through his chest. Yes, Tom is thoroughly content, and everything’s going to be fine.

It’s going to be _fine_.

An hour later, he lies on his back in the dark of their shared room, trying to distract himself from the dawning realization that this is very much _not fine_. That same knowledge is going to bloody, bloody war with the fact that Harry is scary when he’s mad. More than that, Harry’s been so affectionate today; Tom doesn’t want to lose that –

Oh. Oh, no.

It wasn’t a coincidence that Harry had chosen today, of all days, to indulge Tom’s desire for public displays of affection. Today had been a precisely calculated attack against Tom’s convictions.

Harry had manipulated him, and rather masterfully. Tom didn’t think he had it in him.

_He’s learning so well_ , he thinks fondly, then catches himself. He should be… irritated, right? Yes. Harry has manipulated him, and now Tom is very irritated and not at all proud of his dear, snake-y boyfriend.

Tom sits for a moment longer in the darkness, weighing his emotions – but he’s arrived at a decision. Somehow, the realization of Harry’s treachery has flipped a switch in his mind.

He slips from bed on soundless feet, finding his way to the common room with the light tread of a ghost. Lyra sits beside the dying fire, looking wan and conflicted. He knows by a brief flicker of her glaciermelt eyes that she notices him, but neither of them speaks.

He strides through the dungeons with growing confidence. No one will be monitoring the halls tonight. Ascending to the ground floor, he comes across other students passing in the night. Lena Meadows offers him a solemn nod. Blaise Zabini meets him with a secretive smile. Elias Clearwater, the Hufflepuff Head Boy, drops into a short bow of respect. They’re all here for the same reason as he.

The Great Hall itself is empty save the manic dance of the Goblet’s blue flames. It sends strange shadows wriggling desperately on the walls. The false moon projected by the enchanted ceiling seems faded and yellow next to the merciless summer-blue light of the Goblet.

Tom moves closer, driven by academic curiosity as much as by his purpose.

The artifact before him is powerful enough to make the items they had studied in Snape’s class seem like paltry imitations. Other than the Sorting Hat, Tom has never encountered an artifact like this one: advanced enough to make choices, wise enough to control the lives of men.

It’s carved from oakwood, he realizes as he approaches. His heart aches with the knowledge. He and the Goblet are kindred spirits, creatures wrought of the same ancient materials.

Tom summons a pheasant, plucks a feather from its tail, and pulls a thin strip of birch bark from the air. He holds the bird in place, ignoring its aborted shriek of pain as he slits its throat – the blood will serve as his ink. The freshly-inked quill trembles in his grip, hesitating just a moment before he writes his name on the birch bark and feeds it to the flames.

Before the fire has even fully consumed the scrap of paper, he senses that the Goblet has made its choice.

***

Seventeen hours later, the Goblet spits out three names:

Omar Bisset, the short boy from Beauxbatons.

Katarina Ivanoff, the Durmstrang student whose fur-lined cape Harry had so admired.

And from Hogwarts: Tom Riddle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got distracted and wrote a high school au in the middle of working on this chapter, which had two effects: first, that there was a lot of random past tense, and second, that everything came out very fluffy. I edited out the past tense, but not the fluff. You're welcome ;)


	29. Freshwater Tides

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slytherin celebrates Tom's appointment as champion and everyone prepares for the first task.

“Tom Riddle,” McGonagall reads off the final slip of paper spat forth by the Goblet of Fire.

The Great Hall erupts in screaming cheers – for all his introverted nature, Tom has grown popular these last two years – but Harry can hardly hear the noise of it over the roaring in his ears.

In all honesty, he’s not even surprised. This isn’t the first time Tom has been ruled by his ego, and he knows it won’t be the last.

By his side, Tom gets to his feet, eyes reflecting the Goblet’s flame as it dies. He’s bound, now, to the Tournament. Does he know what that means? The sleepless nights, the writhing fear, the constant feeling of being a child among adults…

But Tom’s not a child. He’s ready for this in ways a fourteen-year-old Harry wasn’t.

Harry’s still angry with him, he decides as he watches Tom’s mouth arch into a smirk more raw and delighted than he would usually wear in public. For just a moment, their eyes meet. Abruptly, the smile fades into a plasticky mask of polite, restrained triumph.

And then Tom’s walking away, pace cool and measured. As he joins the other champions, he exchanges a little wave with Dahlia, a smile with Geoff, a nod with James. _Already crafting his persona for the tabloids_ , Harry thinks bitterly.

When had he slipped his name in? Last night, after Harry had finally fallen into a fitful sleep?

Sometimes Harry wonders if he really knows him. He wonders if it’s even _possible_ to know someone like that: Tom, whose head is a swirling nebula of ideas, who lies as easily as he breathes, who sees himself as an equal to Death itself.

***

Down in the dungeons, Slytherin celebrates.

Tom hasn’t returned – if Harry’s memory serves him right, he won’t return from the debriefing with the other champions until around ten o’clock. There will be a party waiting for him when he does: alcohol and banners, legions of supportive Housemates, the abyss of the Black Lake looming beyond the windows…

Harry barely restrains himself from drinking. It’s a close thing; Lyra, evidently bored, keeps mockingly asking why he isn’t happy on Tom’s behalf.

“You’re being unkind,” he tells her eventually, and she subsides.

He has trouble dealing with Lyra sometimes – she never knows when she’s crossed the line from teasing to cruelty. In turn, Harry has difficulty remembering she doesn’t mean harm by her words.

They sit together in the common room for another hour, watching the party and cultivating a comfortable bubble of silence. And perhaps this is Harry’s favorite part of being a seventh-year: no one questions them. They’re free to just _exist_ like this, standoffish and – in Harry’s case, at least – sulking.

Harry doesn’t even realize that he’s waiting for Tom until he’s not anymore.

Tom swans into the common room with the arrogance of a battle-bloodied unicorn, all toothy grin and high cheekbones. Still, when his eyes meet Harry’s from the other side of the room, there’s uncertainty in his expression.

Harry raises an expectant eyebrow, challenging Tom to cross the distance between them. When Tom turns away, choosing instead to accept the warm congratulations of a pack of younger Slytherins, Harry just laughs and sinks back into his chair. “He’s a coward,” he tells Lyra. “Can’t even come over and defend himself to me.”

“I can’t blame him,” says Lyra. “If I went behind your back like that… well. I wouldn’t be tripping over myself to confront you, that much is for certain.”

“I’m not mad at him,” Harry protests.

“Are you sure about that?”

“Well – yeah, okay, I’m a little mad. But this Tournament is no laughing matter, Lyra. He’s going to need his friends – now, more than ever. I’m not about to start feuding with him again.”

Lyra blinks lazily. “How mature of you.”

“He made his choice, and now we have to live with it,” Harry says firmly. “I mean. I haven’t necessarily forgiven him, but…”

From his conversation with a pair of fifth years, Tom shoots them a covert glance. When he sees Harry looking back, he turns firmly away.

Lyra sighs. “I’ll go talk to him.”

“Wait, you don’t have to –”

She ignores him, picking her way through the swirling crowd to tap Tom on the shoulder. Harry retreats into the plush backing of his chair, taking a brooding sip from his water glass.

Lyra says something that makes Tom frown in consideration and meet Harry’s eyes. There’s wariness in the set of his shoulders. Harry smiles reassuringly and the crease between his brows smooths.

“He says he’s busy,” Lyra tells him as she returns to his side. Indeed, Tom takes a glass of non-alcoholic punch from a younger kid. He sweeps his arms out in an ostentatious gesture, clapping Calcifer on the shoulder as he comes to stand at his side. When he next looks in Harry’s and Lyra’s direction, it’s with warmth.

Harry smiles, feeling fondness wear away at his lingering anger. “He’s going to be good at this.”

Lyra gives him a funny look. “Obviously.”

“You… do you think I was wrong to try and stop him?”

“I don’t know if you were _wrong_ , but I don’t think you were really, you know. Thinking.”

Harry grunts. In front of one of the grand windows out to the lake, Tom stands awash in firelight and murky green shadow, the sound of his voice muffled and warped by the crowd and the glass at his back.

Such a beautiful paradox. Harry traces the branching edges of his time travel scar, lost in contemplation.

***

“Can we not do this in Transfiguration class?” Tom whispers, glaring.

Harry grins, lopsided and mischievous. “When you dropped your name in the Goblet, you signed up for a fulltime grind, _champ_.”

Tom sputters, hating the moniker with every scrap of his being. “What if learning about –” he glances down at his notes “– uh, dissolution of cartilaginous structures is integral to one of the Tasks?”

Harry snickers, inking a new row of scales on the dragon he’s doodling in place of notes.

At the front of the classroom, Lupin gives the two of them a knowing look. He’s learned to tolerate their constant distraction – Tom does perfectly on exams regardless of how well he pays attention in class, and Harry has an uncanny ability to simultaneously listen to lecture and hatch plots.

“Believe me,” Harry says smugly, “I’ve been through this whole routine before. I know what I’m talking about. _Constant grind_.”

“Fine,” Tom says, obligingly pulling a bound notebook from his sack. “I went to the library last night after I finished meeting with the other champions. The First Task is always a test of bravery. It’s tradition that the contestants don’t know what they’re facing, but –”

“But everyone cheats anyway,” Harry fills in.

Tom nods, feeling off-balance. He always hates uncovering new wells of Harry-trauma. “Yeah. Exactly. They tend to have people fight beasts or face other seemingly unsurmountable obstacles.”

“Like dragons.”

Tom eyes Harry’s doodle. It’s breathing fire, eyes flashing with a fury so intense that he almost expects the page to ignite. “Yeah. Like dragons. Or manticores… Sometimes the challenges are a bit more abstract, though. I read about one case where they had to retrieve a key from a pool of icy water. The whole thing sounds like more your cup of tea than mine, in all honesty.”

Harry snorts. “Like you said, the First Task has a lot less to do with _courage_ and a lot more to do with sneaking and spying. I think you’ll be fine.”

Tom preens.

“Anyway,” says Harry. “Do you have any leads so far? I know in my case, it was,” he stops, making a face. “Stupid brand. It was this.” He taps his sketch.

“I gathered,” Tom says, amused. “And you were what, fourteen?”

“Yes, yes, it’s very impressive of me. I know. We’ve been over this.”

“No, it just – it explains a lot. You were far too unperturbed by the manticore our first summer. I thought you were mad.”

Harry snorts. “I mean, you weren’t _wrong_. I was just… an _experienced_ madman. Anyway, I was thinking we should scout in the Forest. That’s where they kept the – the _scaly friends_ back in my day.”

“ _Or_ ,” Tom says, “we can consult with my contacts in the business.”

Harry frowns. “People you met this summer…?”

“Maybe as a backup,” Tom says dismissively. “But I was thinking I’d get in touch with an old school friend I heard was going to be consulting for the Tournament.”

Harry’s frown deepens as he watches Tom delve into his pack, fingers hunting for the furry spine of a specific textbook. “What –”

Triumphant, Tom places his Care of Magical Creatures text down on their shared desk and taps the author’s name. “I used to get on quite well with Rubeus Hagrid here. He was a few years below me, but we both spent half our time in the Forest. The unicorns liked him almost as much as they did me.”

He looks up expectantly, waiting for Harry’s face to break into awe and adoration. Harry just looks kind of like he’s going to be sick.

“Are you all right?” Tom asks carefully.

“Yeah.” Harry looks away. “I just… I need a moment, ‘kay?”

Confused, Tom returns to his notes. Maybe this is another Snape situation, and Harry had known a twisted, angry version of Rubeus. For all Tom knows, Rubeus had grown into a terrible person. Still, that doesn’t feel right – the boy he had known was kind to a fault. Tom imagines he and Harry could have been good friends.

He sneaks a glance at Harry and finds him staring blankly down at his sketch, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

Transfiguration is their last class of the day, and Tom feels well within his rights to drag Harry away afterwards. Their Housemates erupt in a flurry of crude suggestions; Harry gives them the bird.

Tom pushes Harry into a hidden window alcove and crosses his arms over his chest. “What’s the matter?”

Harry blinks innocently. “Hmm?”

“You were making that face – the one you always make when you’re remembering something horrible from the other world. Something to do with me.” Tom feels his lip twist in irritation at the notion. More and more, he’s coming to hate the other him, the nothing-man whose madness still haunts Harry. It’s an infuriating limbo: Tom feels sometimes like he should be guilty on his alter’s behalf.

He hates feeling guilty.

That same expression overtakes Harry’s face again. “It’s not important, Tom. It’s just… it’s hard for me, sometimes, to reconcile you with – well. That.”

“It’s something to do with Rubeus,” Tom guesses.

Harry nods.

“He was alive in your – I mean – I didn’t… kill him, did I?”

“No,” says Harry quickly, then reconsiders. “I mean, given the chance you would have in a heartbeat… but no. He was very important to me, though. Probably the closest person I had to a father.”

Tom wrinkles his nose, trying to imagine the elephantine, boisterous boy he had known as a _father_. He can’t picture it. “You’ve never mentioned him.”

Harry laughs humorlessly. “Not to you, no.”

“What –”

“You betrayed him,” Harry says. “You murdered a little girl and pinned it on him, got him expelled in your place. You took _everything_ from him. He could have traveled the globe – he’s written books here, Tom! He’s got all the respect no one ever gave him, he’s got everything he deserves in this world!”

Tom recoils, chest going leaden and icy. “I killed a little girl? _Why_?”

“I think it was an accident,” Harry says, grimacing.

“Brand giving you trouble?”

“Mhmm.”

Tom falters. This line of questioning is physically paining Harry, but still… “I need to know.”

“I – she was in the way. That’s all. I don’t think you – I don’t think _he_ regretted it.”

“I can’t imagine myself just…”

“Neither can I,” Harry says dully. “There’s something we’re missing. _He_ had something missing inside that you just… _don’t_. The summer after your fourth year… I don’t know. There are some mysteries I don’t know if we can ever solve, not in this world.”

Tom goes silent. His mind spins away from him, painting a thousand scenarios in his head. _A little girl_ … how had he killed her? With what spell? He can see it so clearly. Pale face, blue in death, dark hair sticking to the face. Funny, how corpses always seem to be damp in his imagining. Always blue-eyed, accusatory.

He doesn’t regret killing little Dennis Bishop. He doesn’t _want_ to regret killing him.

Blood in the water, magic singing, feeling warm and powerful –

Tom realizes that he can, in fact, imagine killing a little girl.

“Maybe he did have something missing,” Tom says. “But I don’t think it was the thing that stops normal people from killing innocents… I don’t know that I’ve ever had that part.”

“Don’t say things like that.”

Tom wants to snap at him, call him _hypocrite_. “I’m not a psychopath,” he says tightly. “I told you that years ago, and it was true. But my empathy doesn’t make me any less capable of evil.”

“You’re getting better,” says Harry, chin set in stubborn pique.

Tom laughs, short and vicious. “No. _You’re_ getting worse. You just don’t know how to tell the difference anymore.”

Harry’s mouth parts, but nothing comes out.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Tom says, reaching for him.

Harry bats his hand away. “ _Tom_.”

“What? Morality’s overrated, Harry. What do you care about right and wrong, anyway?”

“ _Tom_!”

“ _What_?”

“This isn’t a joke.”

“I’m – Harry, I’m not joking!”

“That’s worse!”

Tom scowls. Out the window, the sky stands in untroubled gray, lapping senselessly at the autumn-red horizon. “It doesn’t matter. Can’t we just – how do they say? – kiss and make up?”

“No,” Harry says. His eyes are the same color as the clouds.

“No…?”

“No! No more kissing, Tom! You ignored me to enter yourself in the stupid Tournament, you aren’t _listening_ to me now, and I – I don’t know, I keep thinking about Hagrid –”

“You said you forgave me about the Tournament! And it’s not like I can help the other stuff –”

“I’m still going to help you. That doesn’t have to involve kissing.”

Tom narrows his eyes. “What if I need moral support?”

“No! This – this isn’t a negotiation, Tom. No more kissing.”

Tom pouts.

Harry taps him in the chest. “We’ve lived together way too long for that expression to have any effect. Now, come on. We have a Tournament to win.”

“Right,” Tom says, pressing himself against the wall so Harry can squeeze back onto the stairwell. “Wait, are you – is this a breakup?”

Harry pauses, pressed between Tom and the rough stone of Hogwarts. Tom can feel his heat through their clothes, see in perfect detail the swell of his lower lip as he chews on it. This kissing prohibition has lost any semblance of humor it might have had. “I don’t –” Harry grimaces, eyes darting up to Tom’s. “I don’t know what this is. A break.”

“Right,” Tom rasps, swallowing jaggedly.

Harry climbs back onto the stairs, smoothing down the front of his shirt and pointedly not making eye contact. “Not a big deal. You’ll always be my best friend, I think. Just – no kissing.”

Tom licks his lips. _Not a big deal_. Yeah, right. This is going to be hell.

***

Hagrid sends a return owl at breakfast, just a day after Tom first solicits him.

Tom opens it eagerly. “He must be nearby if Death Star found him this quickly.”

Harry looks up from scratching under his owl’s beak, and the two of them blink in solemn unison back at Tom.

The letter is printed in a large, careful hand. Tom scans it quickly, deflating with every line. “He says he can’t help us.”

A crease sprouts up between Harry’s eyebrows. “Really? Are we talking about the same Hagrid?”

“Look – ‘unfortunately, the hinds aren’t available for public viewing, and I will not be in the Hogwarts area at any point over the next two months –’. Wait a moment, that can’t be true.”

Harry laughs. “Tom, that’s not a refusal! He’s trying to say he’ll help out while _pretending_ he’s on the straight and narrow. He used to pull the same stunt with me and my friends all the time – acting like he was slipping up and giving us too much information, but actually trying to keep us moving in the right direction. You should have seen the little act he put on for us back in first year…”

“Right,” Tom says dubiously.

“Read that line again.”

“‘The hinds aren’t available for public viewing’,” Tom reads out, more slowly this time. “The _hinds_. You don’t suppose that’s what the task is?”

“Probably is.” Harry starts feeding an orange peel to Death Star, who chokes it down happily. “I, uh, I don’t suppose you have any idea what a ‘hind’ is?”

“It’s another word for ‘doe’,” Tom says, combing through the letter much more carefully. “I guess I’m going to have to fight a big deer?”

Lyra leans over, breaking away from a spirited conversation with Peryle. “Oh! Is this about the task?”

Peryle looks up, dark eyes gleaming. “Do you know what it is already?”

“Not exactly,” says Tom, lowering his voice. The girls lean in to hear. “Do either of you know of a kind of magical deer that would be referred to specifically as a _hind_?”

Lyra shakes her head.

Peryle frowns. “It sounds familiar, but… no.”

“So something obscure, and not anything native to Britain,” Tom says. “Great. That _really_ narrows it down.”

“I mean, it’s not a bad start,” says Harry, holding Death Star above his head so she can take off.

Calcifer sneezes away a feather. “Are you all _plotting_ without me again?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Tom says smoothly. “Cal, I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a kind of magical hind?”

“‘Hind’? Oh, like the Cerynian Hind?”

Lyra snaps her fingers. “Oh! I remember now. Like Heracles’ third labor, right?”

Tom frowns deeply. “Maybe. I, ah, I didn’t realize it was _real_.”

“It’s a species of magical deer native to Greece, I think,” Calcifer says. “Grandfather used to tell us the story of Heracles to help us remember the movements of the stars.”

“Huh.” Tom taps the word ‘hind’ on the letter, frowning meditatively. “We’re going to have to do a lot of research.”

Harry groans.

“Constant grind,” Tom reminds him loftily. “It’ll be just like tracking the manticore back in the good old days, yeah?”

“ _Good old days_ ,” Harry mutters mockingly into his breakfast. “Sure. I just love spending all of my ever-so-abundant free time sitting around in the library.”

“Glad to hear you’re excited to get started.” Tom checks the time with a quick spell. “Now, we have nearly a half hour before class starts… what do you all think of heading up there now?”

***

Tom throws himself into research with a passion, but Thursday afternoons, his time belongs to Harry.

Harry cracks his knuckles with anticipation, looking over the crowded interior of the Room of Requirement. Students from all four Houses gaze back at him, expectant.

“As you all know,” Harry begins, “Tom here managed to secure himself a place in the local death tournament.”

A muddled cheer – they can tell Harry isn’t as thrilled about the situation as they are.

“We don’t know what sort of tasks he’s going to be facing, but figure becoming a better dueler won’t hurt his chances. Which of you is willing to help get him in fighting shape?”

A more confident cheer, now. At Harry’s side, Tom shifts with restrained apprehension. Harry had neglected to fill him in on this little plan.

“Great!” says Harry brightly. “We’ll start with a three-on-one practice, then move up to five-on-one. Ginny, Daphne, and… yeah, okay, Collin, we’ll let you have a shot, too.”

“I hardly think this is necessary,” Tom grumbles.

“Nonsense,” Harry says loudly, placing a hand on the warm small of his back and pushing. “It’ll be a great learning experience.”

“You are _just_ like your father.”

Ignoring him, Harry draws his wand. “Form a circle, everyone. Right. Now, are you three ready?”

Daphne, gone as still and quiet as a hunting panther, nods sharply. Ginny bounces on the balls of her feet.

“I’m ready, Harry!” calls Collin.

Tom scowls and opens his mouth, probably to say something along the lines of ‘ _do_ I _get any say?_ ’

“Go!” Harry barks before he can get it off.

The circle of noncombatants set off a synchronized wave of _Protego_ ’s, trapping Tom and the others in a shimmering bubble of blue.

All the playful indignation falls out of Tom like skin off a shedding snake, leaving behind a slickly dangerous boy. He sets his feet into a duelist’s pose, wand hovering delicately, eyes darting between his opponents.

Ginny moves first. Her wand blazes with green fire, whipping out for Tom’s neck. An instant later, Daphne joins her offensive with a series of neon-yellow spells that fly through the air with a twisting, birdlike grace.

“Ginny’s doing well,” says Susan from Harry’s left. “You should be proud.”

“I can’t take any credit for her progress,” Harry says. “I think it’s half extracurricular work on her behalf and half thanks to Fred’s and George’s… well, y’know. Existence.”

Collin does his best to help, but he hasn’t picked up a knack for combat magic quite yet. Still, his intermittent _Expelliarmus_ ’s and Jelly-Legs jinxes don’t get in the way of his team’s efforts.

Tom hasn’t cast a spell yet. He’s just dodging and knocking spells away, looking cool as a fish navigating the currents of the Black Lake.

“We’re going to have to break him of that habit,” Harry observes.

“Hmm?”

“His strategy of waiting to fire back until he can get in people’s heads. Dueling is mind games, but the battlefield is too chaotic for those tactics. He’s gonna get himself killed if he insists on taking a full minute at the start of every fight just to ‘feel out his opponent’, or however he puts it.”

Susan hums dubiously. “I mean, it seems to work pretty well for him.”

In front of them, the duel _snaps_ in the other direction. Tom neatly sidesteps one of Ginny’s spells and catches an _Expelliarmus_ from Collin on the tip of his wand.

Within seconds, he propels the same _Expelliarmus_ back at Daphne – fast enough to startle her out of rhythm, but not enough to make contact – and lashes out at Collin and Ginny with a vicious _Diffindo_. Collin screams, clutching at his bloodied wrist.

“No maiming, Riddle,” calls Ginny from behind a shield. “We’ve been over this!”

“He’s fine, Ginny,” Harry says. “Collin, d’you forfeit?”

Collin hesitates, stumbling back as a gale-force wind lashes the room courtesy of Daphne.

“No shame in retreating,” Harry reminds him, shouting to be heard over the bloodcurdling scream of a flock of birds Tom has summoned.

“Yeah, okay! I forfeit!” squeaks Collin. One of Ginny’s spells ricochets off the shield wall and misses him narrowly.

A group of sixth-year Hufflepuffs dismiss their shields and absorb Collin behind their barrier.

Without Collin to worry about, the duel grows quickly vicious.

Tom’s eyes have gone dark and focused. He and Daphne are old dueling partners by now. They know each other with a terrible intimacy. She calibrates her attacks to perfectly target his weaknesses, flinging fire into her brewing storm. Though she can’t possibly know the truth of Tom’s ailing heart, their entire dorm understands that Tom can’t handle prolonged exertion or great heat; she keeps him moving, chasing him around the perimeter of the circle.

Ginny, while she doesn’t know the reasoning behind Daphne’s strategy, is clever enough to see what she’s doing. Her flames join Daphne’s, capturing Tom in a multicolored blitz.

A light sheen of sweat begins to form on Tom’s forehead – but his defense doesn’t falter. His wand moves in precise, sharp gestures, snapping off effortless hexes and summoning animals from thin air. The Room itself seems to bend in aid of his assault, manifesting cushions for him to transfigure and making its floorboards buck under Daphne’s feet.

The members of the dueling club tighten their circle, watching with wide eyes as their three classmates trade blows. Everyone’s hair is windblown, their robes twisted awry, their cheeks flushed with the heat of the blaze.

“You can forfeit at any time,” Daphne calls, face locked in breathless anticipation. “Like Harry said… no shame in retreating…”

Tom’s eyes narrow. He looks dreadfully handsome in that moment, all bone and shadow. Harry aches with it, momentarily desolate with summer-melancholy.

Their eyes lock. Harry feels lonely enough to drown, and so in love that it burns. They are the same emotion. Tom smiles, and Harry wonders if the expression looks sad to the others, if anyone else feels that the whirling air in the room has grown heavy.

One of Tom’s cushions expands into a horse the color of a velvet night and lunges toward Ginny. She slashes out with her wand, shouting – it goes down in a swarm of feathers – Harry hears an animal screech, then a string of very creative curses from Daphne –

“No shame in forfeit,” Tom pants.

The feathers settle to the floor, revealing a wandless Daphne and Ginny pinned to the ground by a wiry polecat.

“I surrender,” Daphne says, grinning ruefully. “Good match, Tom.”

Ginny tries to shove the enormous rodent off her chest, but it hisses, gripping her tightly by the shoulders. “Get this thing off me,” she says shrilly. Harry realizes there’s blood on her shirt. Bite marks, uncomfortably close to her jugular.

Tom just crosses his arms over his heaving ribs, clearly waiting.

“I surrender,” Ginny says. She’s stopped struggling, now, eyes locked with the feral thing pinning her.

Tom flicks his wand with studied laziness, and the polecat unfolds into a set of long black robes – he must have used the material of Ginny’s own clothing to create the beast.

Ginny pushes herself back to her feet with Daphne’s help. “How’d you even transfigure those?” she asks with a forced laugh. “They’ve got wards on them that should make that impossible…”

Tom makes a face that Harry thinks is meant to be a mysterious smile, but it just comes off as a grimace. His heart must really be hurting him.

“Well done, all of you,” he cuts in, feeling itchy with guilt. He shouldn’t have pushed Tom so hard. “Now, let’s debrief. What could everyone have done better?”

Geoff raises his hand. He’d been watching the fight with an eagle’s intensity, like he could glean the secrets of survival from seeing his classmates scrap. Harry’s going to have to do something about that – he doesn’t like to watch Geoff becoming this hardened.

“Peryle,” Harry says. “Can you lead this discussion? I’m taking Ginny and Tom to the hospital wing.”

“I don’t need healing,” Tom says, glaring. He’s stayed away from Madame Pomfrey since the battle in the woods at the end of fifth year; the last thing they want is for her to pick up on his heart’s irregularities and start asking questions.

“Nor do I,” says Ginny.

“You’re bleeding,” Harry says. “And conjured or not, polecats aren’t very hygienic animals.”

“Shouldn’t we stick around to hear our own debrief?” asks Ginny.

“Luna will take notes for you.”

“I will?” Luna asks. “Okay, then.”

Tom frowns questioningly at Harry.

Harry tries to wiggle his eyebrows meaningfully.

“Right,” Tom says slowly, his own brows drawing together. “Let’s go, then.”

The halls outside the Room of Requirement feel muted and chill. Ginny and Tom slouch after him, looking respectively puzzled and irritable.

“We’re not actually going to the infirmary, are we?” Ginny asks, glancing between the two of them.

Harry huffs. “You are. That oversized ferret was no joke.”

Ginny hasn’t pulled her robes back on. She touches her neck, scowling.

“And me?” Tom asks. “I wasn’t wounded. I really think I should be there to hear what the others thought of the duel –”

“You did well,” Harry interrupts. “Fantastically, even… I shouldn’t have put you up against that many opponents, though.”

“Yeah, we almost had you at the end there,” Ginny sighs. “Shouldn’t have let you get comfortable enough to summon that many animals, though. I think those birds were what got me. Distracting.”

Tom draws himself up in disdain. He seems to be in less pain, now, but it’s hard to tell with him.

They find the infirmary quickly. “You sure you don’t want to just get a quick checkup?” Ginny asks Tom before she leaves them.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Tom says with studied nonchalance, shoving his bony hands in his pocket.

“Right.”

Then they’re alone in the Hogwarts dusk.

“Harry –” Tom’s eyes squeeze shut. His hair falls across his face in jet-spun curls, gone wavy in the damp of his sweat. Harry wonders if he feels the same brutal yearning that has come to live in Harry’s own heart.

Harry doesn’t even miss kissing him, not really. It would be easier if the source of his longing were physical – but this isn’t a need he thinks touch will sate. “I’m worried about your heart.”

“I miss your eyes.”

It’s a nonsense conversation fragment. They understand each other perfectly.

Harry pulls Tom into a soft embrace, feeling the edges of his loneliness soften, and for a moment he is home.

***

The day of the First Task dawns brutal-bright and windy. Tom can’t stop himself from biting his lower lip bloody in anxiety.

“You’re prepared,” Harry says, watching intently as Tom nibbles away at a breakfast of honeydew melon and grapes.

Harry isn’t eating anything. That same stress that itches at Tom’s bones has settled to the bottom of his lake-gray eyes.

“We know the creatures you’ll be dealing with, we have a good idea as to what the Task will be, and you’re prepared for any magical challenge,” he continues resolutely.

Tom squeezes a grape between his plate and the tines of his fork, watching its juices leak messily out of its torn skin. “I know.”

“I – yeah. I know. That you know.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.” Harry half-stands, then thinks better of it and falls back onto his bench. “You’re going to be fine.”

“Harry.”

“What?”

“You’re just making things worse.”

“Right.”

Tom picks up a steak knife and begins slicing his melon into the tiniest cubes he can manage.

“You should probably eat,” Harry says.

Tom glares. “Not helping.” He does spear a tiny melon cube and place it in his mouth, though. The speck of clear sugar seeps through his mouth, sharp and calm.

Harry smiles slightly.

“Mister Riddle?” says a voice behind them.

Tom barely manages to restrain a full-body flinch. He turns, tightening his shoulders and bringing his face back to passive boredom. “Ah! Percy, right? It’s been too long since I’ve had the pleasure.”

He had met Percy Weasley only once, the summer just after his and Harry’s arrival in this time. He remembers quite liking him, though: a fellow Slytherin, dignified and intellectual. The past two years have aged him, leaving lines in his forehead and bags under his eyes. If Tom remembers correctly, he had gone into the Ministry.

Percy offers him a little twitch of a smile. “If you’ll come with me, we’re collecting the champions for the task.”

Tom readily abandons his paltry breakfast, rising and adjusting his robes.

Harry leans back, grabbing his hand. “Tom. You’re going to do magnificently.”

“I know,” Tom says softly, rubbing his thumb against the dry back of Harry’s hand.

Percy sets off down the Great Hall in a whirl of red hair and stern black robes. Tom follows, feeling numbness spread through his body.

***

It’s not the first time Tom has seen the amphitheater in the Forest. Built into the side of a gorge to overlook the stretch of trees between the western border of the Forest and the river that flows forth from the Black Lake, the amphitheater was one of the few structures that remained after the Forest changed in the wake of the oaks’ deaths.

They’d found references to it in old accounts of the Tournament, too. Harry had seemed surprised; they had apparently used it in his Tournament, but he hadn’t realized how old it was.

Now, Tom feels an echo of that same surprise. The amphitheater he had known was wrought of stone and crawling with plant life, every inch a thing of the Forest. None of that remains.

The Ministry has scoured the arena clean and fitted it with cushioned seats and tiers of wooden scaffolding. It rings with the absence of the impending crowd.

There’s no sign of the hinds, though Tom doesn’t have the time to look hard for them before he’s being shoved into a cloth tent along with the other two champions.

A man with beaming apple-red cheeks, wearing a _Quidditch uniform_ , of all ridiculous things, greets them within. “Welcome, welcome,” he says in a stomach-turning sing-song. “In just under an hour, the Task will be under way! You must all be terribly excited… I know I am!”

Katarina Ivanoff, the girl from Durmstrang, scowls at the burlap floor and begins combing her hair into an elaborate braid.

The diminutive Beauxbatons champion – Omar Bisset – makes an attempt at commiserating eye contact with Tom. Tom can’t find it in himself to reciprocate.

“Ludo Bagman at your service,” the boisterous man goes on, chuckling to mask his clear awkwardness. He thrusts a hand out at Tom, who shakes it reluctantly.

Omar shakes his hand, too, but Katarina just sneers at it until Bagman withdraws.

“Right, then! To business. I have a bag of ten tokens –” he shakes a little burlap sack by way of demonstration, “– each of which has a number printed on it from one to ten. You’ll go in order of token.”

Katarina, though broadcasting her reluctance, sticks her hand inside the bag.

“You’re not going to tell us anything about the Task?” Omar asks. “All we get is the number?”

“That’s right!” Ludo says, bouncing on his heels as if buoyed by the strength of his forced cheer. “That’s the point of the Task, right? It’s meant to be a surprise.”

Katarina’s stoic expression cracks into a surprisingly sweet smile. She glances to Tom and Omar, practically oozing good humor. A moment later, she pulls out her token.

“A four,” Bagman reads out. “Excellent, excellent… Mister Bisset, if you would be so kind?”

Omar draws out a token of his own: two.

Tom looks down at his hands and finds them shivering. _One in eight chance of going first_ , he thinks. _One in eight of going second_. _Six in eight of going last_. He grits his teeth and wills his hands to still.

Bagman shakes the bag in front of his head. Tom inflates his lungs and pulls a token. It’s made of polished wood, the number plated in gold.

“Seven!” Bagman reads out. “There you have it: we’ll have Miss Ivanoff, then Mister Bisset, then Mister Riddle. Now, you three just wait here… we’ll be along to collect you shortly. Don’t, ah, don’t try anything in my absence! I want this to be a level playing field!” He winks, then bustles away and lets the flap of the tent close behind him.

“Did he… did he just imply we should start hexing each other?” Omar frowns.

Tom finds a worthy spot of flooring and settles upon it, folding his legs under himself. “I believe so. What a strange man.”

Omar eyes he and Katarina warily. “So, are we – are we going to do that?”

Tom blinks slowly up at him. “I don’t have a problem with that, but I’m not about to fire first. I assure you, I won’t need to resort to _petty sabotag_ e to win this Tournament.”

Katarina laughs. “Arrogant! I like it.”

“I’m not going to hex anyone,” says Omar.

“I would rather be friendly,” Katarina says decisively. “At least in these early stages, yes? We can sabotage each other in the spring.”

Tom relaxes into the breathing exercises Harry had taught him, letting his thoughts drift into calm battle-readiness. He wasn’t built for this kind of thing, not like Harry was. Still, he’s learned to be a warrior. He trusts himself. There’s comfort in that certainty.

Katarina and Omar fall into soft conversation. Tom thinks they’re speaking German – Katarina fluently, Omar more cautiously. Not unexpected. Most wizards know far more languages than the average Muggle; when he first started learning Ancient Runes, he’d found himself leagues behind his classmates trying to read textbooks written in Arabic, explaining runes from wizarding traditions across the world. He’s still self-conscious over his Arabic pronunciation, and he doesn’t know a lick of any other languages.

He lets the German fade into the background of his awareness, imagining time as a stream of sand through the neck of an hourglass.

After some interminable span of minutes, he becomes aware of the noise of a great many people moving outside of the tent. The token in his hand is a cold weight, sending frost crackling through his blood. _Breathe_.

Bagman comes back to collect Katarina. She leaves with a wave and a jaunty swirl of her wand.

Wisely, Omar doesn’t disturb Tom’s meditative silence. There’s no way to tell what’s going on outside from the rise and fall of the crowd’s roar, but that doesn’t stop him from trying as the minutes tick past.

Eventually, Omar leaves for his own turn.

Tom, alone, finds the tremble return to his hands. Dry-mouthed, chilled, but strangely detached. It’s a betrayal from his body. He grits his teeth and contains the fear as best he can.

After a too-short eternity, Bagman returns one final time.

“Mister Riddle?” he says, jolly and grating.

Tom rises, spelling his robes into crisp perfection. “I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have D&D brainrot and I'm trying to figure out the squad's classes... Tom is a bard with levels in druid, obviously, and Harry's a wizard who acts like he's a fighter. Not sure about anyone else.


	30. The Three Hinds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom competes in the first task, Harry endures yet another party, and the approaching Yule Ball sends the school into a tizzy.

“Your first Task will be to catch the Cerynian hind,” Bagman says self-importantly, guiding Tom out of the tent. “You know the story, I assume.”

Any _pureblood_ would know the story, yes. Tom, who spent the past month researching the third labor of Heracles with the aid of his pureblooded friends, does as well. “Of course,” he says.

“There are three loose in the arena. They’re confined to a relatively small stretch of forest, don’t worry.” Bagman’s jowls wobble with the force of his chuckle.

Heracles had spent a year chasing the Cerynian Hind of legend across the Peloponnese. Only by crippling it with an arrow had he managed to finally bring the beast down.

“Each of them has a medallion hanging from its antlers,” Bagman continues, raising his voice to be heard above the roar of the crowd as they see Tom.

Tom waves to the stands, positioning a cold smile upon his lips.

“Of course, the other two champions have already collected their medallions, so only one of the three hinds still has one.”

The fake smile dies.

“The judges will account for the added difficulty, don’t you worry! And I doubt you’ll have any trouble discerning which of them Miss Ivanoff dealt with…”

The scent of smoke and copper hangs heavy on the air as they draw closer to the arena.

“Her score suffered from _that_ little decision. Shame, really. They’re such beautiful creatures.”

Laying in the center of the arena is the corpse of a great red deer. Its antlers, wrought in spiraling reams of gold, glint in the pale sunlight.

“The others will be hiding, I expect.”

“Quite.” Tom flexes his fingers, revising his opinion of Katarina. To kill one of the beasts… he hadn’t expected that sort of ruthlessness from her.

Bagman lays the tip of his wand against his throat and calls out, “And now for the final round of the First Task! Tom Riddle of Hogwarts, your time starts now!”

Tom looks to the stands, scanning for a scrap of black hair – but there’s no time to linger on Harry. He has a purpose to achieve.

He stalks forward, wand held loosely at his side, ears alert.

There’s a certain rhythm to the thrumming noise of the crowd. They’re not deep in the Forest, but he can still hear the hollow song of the woods.

He hums under his breath, filling in the melody that the trees had once carried. His wooden heart pulses in unison.

The dead hind is a note of discord within the song, spreading unease through the clearing where it lays. Tom changes his tune, picking out the foreign notes. There’s a certain reedy sound to the music of the living hinds. Though their song moves at the clip as the music of the Forest, it swells at unexpected intervals, as if bewildered by the distinguished triplet march of the wood.

Tom tucks his wand back up his sleeve and closes his eyes.

And then, softly, he begins to sing.

The crowd quiets as he grows comfortable with the tune and begins to project the sound of his voice. He hasn’t performed like this since he was nine years old, standing in a choir of fellow orphans before a gray congregation, but it comes easily now. Wordless notes, one after the other, falling seamlessly from his mouth in unfamiliar four-four time.

As he sings, the song of the Forest itself changes, molding to accommodate the new reedy beat of the hinds.

Something cold and whiskered brushes against the side of his hand, and he opens his eyes to see the two living hinds standing before him. They’re enormous – their shoulders come up to his eye level, and Tom himself is far from short. The first of the two raises its head from his hand to blink at him through liquid black eyes.

The watery morning sunlight picks them out in perfect lines of crimson and bronze, shot through with spots of stark white. Up close, the antlers look almost crystalline.

“Hello,” Tom tells them. “I, ah, I need something from one of you.”

He can see the medallion now, glistening from where it dangles upon the second deer’s spectacular horns.

“I’m supposed to fetch that,” he says, pointing.

The hinds just stare implacably back at him, ears swiveling. It seems they don’t share the unicorns’ gift for understanding human tongues.

Carefully, hands outstretched in a gesture of peace, Tom moves toward the deer with the medallion. It dances away, impossibly light on its feet for such a massive animal, but as he begins singing again it calms.

He holds a hand up towards its head and begins delicately patting it on the cheek, then moves his hand down its neck to rest on the downy fur at its side. The deer, docile now, simply watches him.

“I’m going to get on your back now,” he tells it, though he knows it won’t understand.

There’s no graceful way to climb up. Tom pulls out his wand and pours unformed magic into the grass under his feet until it grows, forming a step that allows him to haul himself astride the hind. The creature bellows in betrayal, but doesn’t bolt. He can feel it shivering below him. He presses his cheek against the back of its neck and begins humming, running his hand gently along its front.

After almost a full minute, it calms. Still humming, Tom readjusts himself on its back. The medallion dangles feet above his head, secured by a thin metal chain to a spur off one of its horns.

He holds his breath, points his wand, and lets loose a single sharp jet of magic that proves _just_ enough to snap the chain and send the medallion tumbling to the forest floor. The deer shakes its massive head in affront, but seems relatively unbothered.

Tom exhales hugely. “Thank you,” he murmurs, patting the side of the deer in gratitude. “ _Thank_ you. I’m going to get off now.”

The dismount is far easier than getting on had been. As he leaps off the back of the great red hind, Tom becomes once again aware of the crowd watching him in mute fascination. Hundreds of people in rapt audience to a trial he had passed with flying colors.

Tom smiles, bringing himself to his full height and letting a bright smile grow on his face. He holds his hand out and compels the grass to grow again, bringing the medallion to his waiting grasp.

The crowd breaks its silence as he holds it above his head. Tom strides forward, shaking his shoulders back, and stands at attention before the judge’s table.

For the first time, he sees the five adults for whom he had performed: Headmistress McGonagall, Madame Maxime, Headmistress Nikola Orsinov, Ludo Bagman –

And Minister Albus Dumbledore.

The icy apprehension from before rears back, slamming his throat closed. He hasn’t seen Dumbledore since _December_. Not since the shadowy war against the Muggles properly kicked off. Not since the battle of Hogsmeade, leaving the Potters’, finding his father’s grave…

Dumbledore smiles down at him with icy geniality. It’s all Tom can do not to shiver at the impassivity of those glacier-blue eyes.

“And now for the scoring!” Bagman booms from the judges’ table. “Is everyone ready? I know I am!”

The roar of the crowd drowns the melody of the Forest in messy human noise. His mouth feels as dry as the Mother’s bones as he stares back at the man he had once considered his mentor.

Four of the judges display their scores, shooting ribbons from their wands to form glittering numbers in the air. Tom can’t be bothered to read them. He watches numbly as the old man tilts his head to the side, staring straight through Tom into his shuddering oaken heart, and shoots a bright ribbon of his own into the air.

Tens from Bagman and McGonagall, a nine from Orsinov, and an eight from Maxime. And at last, from the Minister, a third ten.

This should feel like victory. Why does the sight of these two numerals – _1-0_ – fill him with such dread?

It doesn’t matter. The crowd screams, and he loses himself in the tuneless noise.

***

“I think I do want to marry him.” Harry takes a shallow sip of huckleberry wine, then sets it aside, wrinkling his nose.

He and Lyra stand in the corner of the common room furthest from the fireplace, the chill of the lake seeping into their bones from the glass at their backs.

Lyra follows his gaze to Tom, sitting in his throne, outlined in the leaping gold of the fire. “I thought you two were… fighting, or something.”

“What gave you that idea?”

“Less public displays of affection.”

Harry scoffs. “When have we ever been touchy-feely in public?”

She shrugs and grabs his glass, taking a sip. “Ugh. Who brought this? I swear, if this is another of Michael’s moonshine experiments –”

“I thought you enjoyed that basil concoction he came up with last spring.”

Lyra mimes retching. “Nah. Gave me the worst bloody hangover I’ve ever had. Potions didn’t make a dent in that headache.”

Harry laughs lightly, resting the back of his head against the thick glass of the window to the lake.

“So. Tom. Marriage. What, the no-kissing thing has you moping? You saw his stunt today and decided you wanted to jump him?”

“Ew.” Harry reaches back for the wine and swirls a sip around his mouth, waiting for it to taste like something other than sugared vinegar. No luck. “Kind of the opposite, actually.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I dunno. It’s like – I –” Harry sticks out his tongue, hoping the damp taste of dungeon air will clear away the lingering bitterness of the alcohol. “Kissing him is fine. It’s – it’s _nice_. But it’s nothing to do with why I like him. I guess – it’s hard to put it into words. I can’t imagine my future without picturing him at my side.”

“Huh.”

“‘Huh’? I – I don’t know how else to put it. It’s like – I spent all summer pining for him like a – like a damn _carrier pigeon_ –”

Lyra giggles.

“Oh, come on, that was a good metaphor.”

“Not really.”

“Anyway, it was pathetic… I _felt_ pathetic. I missed him more than I used to miss magic, back, uh – never mind. But I haven’t missed kissing him at all.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“I know.” Harry sighs, eyes wandering back to Tom’s firelit cheekbones. “I think what I’m trying to say is that I really, _really_ like him, and it has nothing to do with those sorts of… of shallow things. Kissing, physical attraction, y’know?”

“I don’t think kissing is shallow at all,” Lyra says, pretty lips bowing pensively.

“Oh.”

“Tom must not be a very good kisser.”

“I wouldn’t know,” says Harry. It’s not like he’s ever kissed anyone else, at least properly. Then he stops, thinking. “No, he is a good kisser. I’m almost certain. Maybe the problem’s with me.”

Lyra sighs softly, the blue of her eyes lost in the dimness of the nighttime common room. “I don’t know about that. _I’ve_ never felt all those things you were talking about – pigeons and pining… I want to, though. It sounds kind of lovely.”

“It is lovely, sometimes,” Harry says. “Other times, it just hurts.”

“Any emotion that turns Harry Partr – sorry, Potter – into a _poet_ can’t be that bad.”

“We’re still young,” Harry says. “You still have plenty of time to fall in love.”

He glimpses a flash of pearly tooth as Lyra tilts her head back to swallow the rest of the wine. “That’s not what I mean. Whatever you have, that makes you feel those things –”

“Cocktail of dumbass hormones,” Harry mutters.

“Yeah. Whatever. I don’t have that.”

Harry hums. “Same as I don’t have – whatever makes kissing feel like more than a moderately pleasant exchange of saliva.”

She laughs, sounding a little thrilled. “Yeah. Exactly.”

“Huh,” he says, feeling light in a way that has nothing to do with the mouthful of wine. “Y’know, I’ve never talked with anyone about this before.”

Lyra takes his hand and rests her head against his shoulder. “I’m looking forward to the wedding, Harry.”

He leans his cheek against her thick curls. “Don’t expect it anytime soon. But – someday.”

Across the room, Tom laughs, eyes crinkling, dark hair throwing off firelight like rolls of perfect obsidian. _Someday_ , Harry thinks, and his heart sings like a stupid metaphorical carrier pigeon.

***

“They tried to get the hinds to go back to Greece,” Harry says, shoving his Defense textbook into his bag. “Did you hear about that?”

Tom looks mildly disturbed. “I take it that didn’t work out well for anyone involved.”

“An Auror got gored,” Harry says gleefully. He clears his throat. “I mean, not fatally. But yeah, they decided to just leave them in the Forest… I don’t suppose you have an explanation for that?”

“I kind of… wove them into the music of the Forest,” Tom says.

“Oh.” Harry stands, shouldering his bag. “I didn’t know that was a thing you could do.”

“Neither did I,” says Tom, looking momentarily smug.

Harry elbows him good-naturedly in the side and heads out of the Defense classroom, throwing a casual wave over his shoulder for James. It’s Thursday night, the first week of December – time for their second meeting of the dueling club since the First Task.

“Can I take a look at the medallion again?” Harry asks.

Tom pulls the thin chain over his neck and hands over the glinting bronze disk on the end. It’s still warm from the heat of his chest.

“It looks kind of like a compass or something,” Harry says, running his fingers along the edge in search of a hinge.

“Or a timepiece,” Tom says, skin under his eyes crinkling.

Harry snickers. “Did you try singing to it?”

“That was one of the first things I did.”

“Putting it under water?”

“Harry, for the last time, _yes_. Nothing happened.”

“Parseltongue?”

“Why would that – I mean, yeah, I did try that. It didn’t _work_ , though. Obviously.”

Harry sighs softly, handing the medallion back. “We’ll crack it soon enough. We have plenty of time.”

“I suppose you’re the expert,” Tom says doubtfully.

Harry stays strategically silent as they wait for a staircase to shift and grant them access to the fourth floor. Hopefully Tom will be more prepared for the Second Task than Harry himself had been.

Dueling club is well-attended, but none of Harry’s pupils seem very focused. He sets them to a simple warm-up to strengthen their basic _Protego_ s, but most of the younger devolve devolve into little whispering knots within barely two minutes of the time allotted for the drill.

Harry ducks under a stray jinx from Neville and Ginny’s bout, making his way over to Pansy, Daphne, and Lyra. The three of them, at least, are working hard – Pansy is sending a veritable barrage of spells splashing against the others’ shields. Harry is loath to interrupt; it’s good to see Pansy so invested in Defense work.

Daphne notices him watching and signals a stop. “Hey, Harry.”

“Hey,” Harry says. “Really nice work, there, Pans.”

“Michael and I have been practicing together,” Pansy says brightly.

Harry twirls his wand between his fingers. “Did I miss something? Everyone seems really distracted today.”

Daphne frowns, looking around. “You’re right. Why –”

Pansy laughs. “They’re probably just excited about the Yule Ball. Look, it’s all the fourth and fifth years that’re chatting. I’ll bet they’re all trying to figure out who they want to go with.”

Harry’s optimistic mood plummets. “I forgot about the ball. _Ugh_.”

“It won’t be that bad,” Lyra says. “I mean, there’ll be music and stuff… you’re probably a good dancer, aren’t you, Harry?”

“Not even a little bit.”

Daphne adopts a deep scowl. “At least you both have someone to go with.”

“Do I?” Harry and Lyra ask in unison.

“Of course _you_ do, Harry.” Lyra turns on him, bright and accusing. “Or should I go tell Tom he should worry about his boyfriend running off with someone else? Because I _promise_ you he won’t be best pleased to hear that.”

“It’s just – things are complicated between Tom and I right now. More than that, he’s a champion! The champions’ dates have to participate in that horrible first dance – in front of _everyone_ –”

None of them look impressed.

Harry crosses his arms. “I’d rather just go with friends,” he insists, but now he’s imagining dancing with Tom. In front of everyone or not, it’s a nice fantasy, and he certainly wouldn’t abide _Tom_ attending the ball with someone else. The image of Draco Malfoy’s head of slicked-back gold hair in Tom’s arms flashes across the lens of his mind, and Harry has to suppress a full-body shudder. “Besides, Lyra, you have someone you can go with – won’t you just want to go with Calcifer?”

Lyra blinks, slow and blank. “Certainly not.”

Cursing himself, Harry remembers their conversation from barely a week ago. “Right.”

“We’ll have plenty of dances to attend in the future, after we are wed,” Lyra goes on, not meeting his eyes. “I think for now I’d prefer to attend with – with anyone _other_ than Calcifer, honestly.”

“Draco?” asks Pansy.

Lyra’s brows furrow. “Maybe… I was thinking of one of those Durmstrang boys, actually.”

Harry snickers. “What, that burly guy with the phoenix tattoo on his bicep?”

Daphne blinks, hard. “Good gracious.”

“That’s the one,” Lyra says, grinning slowly. “You know me well, Harry dear.”

Harry smiles back, grateful for the return of her levity.

“You should go get everyone back on track,” Daphne says. “We’ll be fine.”

“Right.”

“Oh, and – if you’re looking for a friend to go with, Harry, I’d be willing to accompany you.”

He considers Daphne, standing proud and tall, hair hanging in perfect sheets of gold over her shoulders. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says warily.

“As friends,” she repeats, frowning.

There’s a weight to her gaze, but he can’t quite unravel its meaning. Stupid Yule Ball, always making things a thousand times more complicated than they have any right being…

Harry turns away from the three girls, clapping his hands to restore the attention of the room to himself. The chattering knots of students disperse, their few actual practice bouts puffing out. On the far side of the room, Tom looks up from a conversation with Ron.

Harry smiles, straightening his spine. He could get used to leadership.

***

That Saturday, Harry is startled out of his brunch by a callused hand on his shoulder.

“Hello, Professor Potter,” says Peryle, leaving off their conversation about the real-life practicality of Potions.

Harry turns, blinking. “James? Hi. What – ah, what’s up?”

“Can’t I visit my son in my own school?” James asks, reaching down to ruffle his hair.

“’Course you can,” says Harry, leaning into the touch. “I was just surprised – it’s not a Hogsmeade weekend, is it?”

James’s hazel eyes dance with mischief. “It’s not. Still, I was thinking we should go on a little shopping expedition. How’s a visit to Diagon sound?”

Harry eyes his father distrustfully. “Why…?”

Pansy slams her hands down on the table, rattling everyone’s dishes. Peryle, sitting next to her, leans away, hunched protectively over her croissant.

“Yes, Pansy?” Harry asks, pushing his glasses up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“He’s taking you shopping for dress robes!” she declares triumphantly. “And good thing, too, because – and don’t take this the wrong way, Harry – your current wardrobe is simply not up to snuff. It’s no wonder you’re afraid of the champion’s dance! I would be, too, if I had to face a crowd in your pseudo-Muggle excuse for a fashion sense.”

“He’s not taking me shopping for dress robes,” Harry says. “That would be ridiculous. I can just get a set by owl order. Er, right, James?”

James grins guiltily.

Harry buries his face in his hands to muffle a curse.

“Tom, that goes for you as well,” James says, raising his voice to reach further down the table.

Tom looks up from what looks like a plotting session with Susan, Calcifer, and a hovering Draco. “Oh, hullo, James. What was that?”

“I’m taking your date here to get a nice pair of dress robes from Diagon,” James says, patting Harry heavily on the shoulder. “Do you already have yours? I’d like to buy you a pair.”

Tom blinks owlishly, then grins. “I have a date?”

Harry chokes on his own spit.

“Neither of you has asked the other?” James gives out a barking laugh he must have picked up from Sirius. “Oh, no. Have I ruined some moment one of you was planning?”

Tom’s grin falters. He looks almost worried.

“Oh.” Harry clears his throat, wincing as Lyra jabs him in the side. “Don’t worry about it, James… Tom, d’you want to come to the Yule Ball with me?”

“I would like that very much, Mister Potter,” Tom says, every inch the gentleman.

 _The Blacks trained him well_ , Harry thinks, but the prospect just makes him feel strangely nostalgic. He hates that he had missed nearly three months of Tom’s life this summer.

“And I don’t have dress robes yet, no,” Tom says. “I was just going to order a set by owl.”

Pansy snorts. “You’re both disasters.”

“It’s the most economical option,” Tom says tightly.

“Good,” James says. “Yes, right, well if you’re both ready –”

Harry stuffs a bread roll in his pocket. “Ready.”

“Uh, sure,” says Tom. “Sorry to cut this short, Draco… I trust Susan can fill you in on the rest…”

“Excellent,” James says brightly, smiling around at their fellow Slytherins. “Good to see you all… remember that reading I’ve assigned for Monday, yeah?”

Before Harry knows it, they’re stepping through the Floo in James’s office and into the Leaky Cauldron.

“So, we’re good, then?” Tom asks in an undertone as they cross the threshold into Diagon.

“Why does everyone keep acting like we were fighting?” Harry mutters in return. “Yes, Tom, we’re fine. We’ve _been_ fine.”

“Thank god,” Tom says. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed kissing you.”

Harry snickers. “Not very Slytherin of you, giving me that kind of leverage. If I ever want to make you do something, I’ll know to just, ah – _withhold smooches_.”

“Ew,” Tom says.

Harry grabs his hand and swings it between them. “D’you not like the word ‘smooches’?”

James half-turns, brows raised. “Do I want to know…?”

“No,” they chorus. Tom, Harry notices, has gone rather pink.

James takes them to an unfamiliar tailor. The shop is hung with raw fabrics, each with a strange magic all their own: velvet shifting like fur on the back of a slumbering animal, silk that seems to disappear when he’s not looking directly at it, a material of such absolute black that it almost frightens him.

An elderly woman appears from among her vibrant wares, all elegant posture and sternly crimped mouth. “Auror Potter,” she says. “A pleasure, truly.”

She doesn’t sound genuine. Harry does his very best not to look like a sulking teenager, but has a feeling he doesn’t quite succeed.

“Madame Lockstone!” says James, grinning as if his own enthusiasm might wear away her apparent disapproval. “These two fine young men are looking for dress robes to wear to the Yule Ball, and I could think of no better tailor to recommend than yourself.”

“A school function?” Lockstone sniffs. “I see. I suppose I can go fetch some of my more… mundane materials for their purposes.”

She stalks away, back into the rainbow of the back room.

“She works on all the Auror robes,” James says. “Best protective charms I’ve ever had the pleasure to wear… Agnes and I have been friends for years, now.”

“Friends,” says Tom flatly.

James waves away his doubt. “Oh, yes. Takes a while to get used to her, but she’s not one for showing affection through words.”

Indeed, Lockstone comes back with not only an enormous stack of fabrics, but a pack of chocolates that she tosses toward James. “It’s been far too long since you’ve visited,” she says, glaring at him over her spectacles. “Ah. James, these don’t happen to be the time traveling children you told me about last autumn…?” She summons a rack on which to assemble the fabrics, sorting them with no pattern Harry can discern. “Good. You two will be wanting to match, I take it?”

Harry realizes that they’re still holding hands and lets go, ignoring Tom’s disappointed scowl.

“Right. And I don’t suppose you’ve discussed color schemes at all?”

“Black,” Tom says immediately.

Lockstone looks up from her work, pinning Tom with a look of profound irritation. “Don’t be a bore. With _your_ coloring? Oh, no, no. That would be a waste.”

“Red?” Harry ventures.

“Certainly not,” Lockstone says, not even looking up. “For your date, maybe. But red is _not_ your color.”

Harry deflates.

“Nothing for it but to try out a couple of different options,” she says. “Experiment a little, hmm?”

Seeing that she seems to be genuinely awaiting a response, Harry says, “I – yeah. Sure.”

“Good. Now, up you get – _yes_ , young man, that goes for both of you – arms up.”

Harry stands stiffly with his hands held out away from his body, watching colors unfold from Lockstone’s rack to descend in a rich flurry upon he and Tom. Florals, metallics, flat colors – all beautiful. None stay still long enough for Harry to get a good look.

“A nice olive tone, I think,” Lockstone says to James after a minute of this. “Perhaps as the accent.”

 _Green_. Tom does look nice in Slytherin colors, at least on the rare occasions that he leaves behind his usual neutral palette. But olive is a few shades closer to brown, isn’t it?

Lockstone holds up a swatch of fabric the color of the moss that used to grow on the oaks and nods decisively. “We’ll pair it with white, I think. Any preferences on cut?”

“We’ll have to defer to your judgement there,” James laughs.

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” the seamstress sighs, snapping her fingers. A flock of tape measures descends on Harry, whipping around his waist and stretching across the span of his arms before he has time to blink.

The next thing he knows, James and Lockstone are shaking hands and making their farewells, herding he and Tom back out onto the cobbles of Diagon.

“That wasn’t what I expected,” Harry says, shaking out his hands.

“In a good way or a bad way?” James asks, smiling.

“Good,” Tom says.

Harry leans against him. “James wasn’t asking _your_ opinion. But, yeah… it wasn’t boring. I was expecting it to be boring.”

“You’re excited about the robes, aren’t you,” Tom says, a smug smile coming to rest on his lips.

Harry pauses, thinking. “Yeah, I suppose I kind of am,” he says. He doesn’t give voice to the thought that’s been rattling around in his head for months, ever since Pansy’s little joke at the beginning of the school year: he’s going to marry Tom one day, if he has any say in the matter. This excursion feels like an echo of something yet to come. _Matching color schemes_. It should be a simple thing. “I think it’ll be… fun, this time. The ball.”

“It wasn’t fun last time?”

Harry takes Tom’s hand and starts tugging him along; they’re lagging behind James on the crowded street. “Too much drama, and I wasn’t very good friends with the girl I went with.”

“I don’t think there’ll be any shortage of drama this year,” Tom points out. “I mean, the actual event is still almost three weeks away, and already we’ve had three explosions in the Great Hall and at _least_ two instances of Amortentia smuggling… and that’s not even mentioning Pansy and Michael’s argument on Thursday.”

“Ugh,” Harry agrees. “You’re right. What a mess.”

“If James hadn’t interfered, would you still have –”

“Asked you to come with me? Yeah. I was making plans to talk with you about it this weekend, actually. Thought I’d bring you out to the Forest and make a proper proposal of it,” Harry says, speeding up so he doesn’t have to look at Tom’s face.

Tom keeps pace easily, squeezing his hand. “Wait, Harry, really? The one time you actually tried for romanticism, and I missed my chance to receive it?”

Harry dares to look up and sees Tom’s sharp face has gone soft with fondness. “It wouldn’t have been romantic, really. Just… private, you know?”

Tom looks at him like he used to at the unicorn foals, uncharacteristically wondering. “That’s what we’ll do this weekend,” he says. “We’ll go out to the Forest, and we’ll just _be_ together.”

“It’s a date,” Harry says, pressing his side against the solid warmth of Tom’s arm.

Tom slows in the street, turning to face him fully.

“No kissing.” Harry laughs, kicking aside battered fall leaves and dragging Tom across the threshold into the Leaky Cauldron. “There’ll be plenty of time for that later.”

***

The Forest takes to winter like a moth shaking off its clinging cocoon.

In their wanderings, Tom and Harry find themselves at the bottom of a great ravine by the base of the mountains. The ground beneath their feet lies carpeted in a wildfire of fallen leaves, nude birches looming spindly and massive over their heads to spear the faded blue of the noon sky.

Harry looks a heartbeat away from the ram, eyes watchful under their deceptive gray. His hair springs from his head in a wooly mass, dark and rich as the soil at their feet.

He turns to Tom with bright abandon, playful as a woodland creature and twice as sharp. “This is where we belong, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“The woods. Magic.” Harry turns his head up to stare at the branch-shattered sky. “All magic is wild, in the end. Doesn’t matter if we cage it with spells and books and buildings… it comes from the Forest. Wizards belong out here.”

Tom swallows. “What’s brought this on?”

Harry shrugs. “I’m just… I’ve been thinking a lot about the future, lately. The war. What it might mean for us.”

“I see. And what have you decided?”

Harry’s face creases unreadably. “Haven’t decided anything. But if the war… _happens_ , if we forfeit the Statute of Secrecy, there’s no going back. We’ll only have two possible futures left. That’s terrifying.”

“Either we win, or we lose,” Tom interprets. “Magical supremacy, or complete eradication?”

Harry hums in acknowledgement. Tom can feel him watching out of the corner of his eye.

“This is about more than not wanting our classmates to have to become soldiers,” Tom says slowly. “You want them to… what? The Ministry didn’t instigate this conflict. Dumbledore’s just reacting.”

“I think Dumbledore _wants_ this war,” Harry says. “I think the entire Ministry wants it.”

“They do.” Tom had learned as much that summer. “But Harry, that doesn’t change anything about our situation –”

“There’s a third choice,” says Harry. “ _Not_ breaking the Statute of Secrecy. They’re hesitating, keeping everything to the shadows for now – while things stay that way, we still have hope of salvaging this.”

“Yes,” Tom says, confused. “Sure. But I… I don’t know. Would Dumbledore’s world really be that bad?”

“What –? _Yes_ , Tom. It would be ‘that bad’. You _know_ that.” Harry looks properly angry.

“He’s the only reason I’m still alive.”

“Dumbledore?”

“Yes. I’m certain about that, now. The Unspeakables would have had me killed, based on your testimony.” Tom wets his lips, kicking at a muddy tussock of grass. “You didn’t see the way he looked at me after the First Task. If he thinks I’m not useful…”

“So, what? You’ll fall in line, become a nice little servant for our _dear Minister_ just because you’re afraid he’ll have you killed?”

“That’s basic self-preservation,” Tom snaps.

Harry whirls, eyes flashing with deathly rage. The glamour has seemed so much flimsier lately. “No, Tom. That’s cowardice on a level I would _never_ forgive.”

Tom takes a step back, breathing in the unsteady scent of ozone.

“I’ve been thinking,” Harry says again, eyes slipping closed, voice carefully restrained. “And we don’t have much time. We need to kill this war before it tears its way into the awareness of the Muggles.”

“I… that’s all well and good, Harry, but _how_? We’re just kids.”

“If I have learned one thing, in all my years,” Harry says grimly, “it’s that there’s no such thing as ‘just kids’. That sort of mentality is what got you killed the first time.”

Tom recoils, mind racing with such vibrant shock that he barely registers Harry’s pained grimace and his hand going to the back of his neck.

“Determination is the most destructive tool in our arsenal,” Harry goes on, eyes sparking viridian. “We rip their precious system to shreds, withdraw from this stupid war, and return to the Forest. It’ll protect us from the Muggles, and we’ll have the future we deserve.”

“I thought – you just accused _me_ of cowardice. I mean, I’ve thought about that – a – a _lot_ , actually, but it’s not doable. Even if we could get the older folk to go along with it, what about the Muggleborns? They wouldn’t just stop being born…”

Harry shrugs with violent carelessness. “Better’n a war. Better than giving up our principals for personal safety.”

“And in all your thinking, have you come up with a _plan_ for this idea?”

“We’ll figure something out.”

“Harry –”

“ _Yes_. I know. I’m an idiot. I thought maybe you’d be able to… to… I don’t know what I thought.”

Tom stops in the path, considering. He stares into the peeling white bark of a nearby birch tree, momentarily paralyzed by contemplation. “I… perhaps it _isn’t_ impossible,” he says slowly. “But we lead with words, not violence.”

Harry blinks, looking cautiously hopeful.

“As a Triwizard champion, I have a platform,” Tom continues, lowering himself to sit against the tree. The smooth wood at his back centers him, makes him feel less like a knife in the grip of something far beyond himself. “For the general population, the tasks are like sporting events. Those audiences hold not just the entirety of the Hogwarts staff and students, but a large cut of Ministry workers…”

“Not to mention graduated civilians,” Harry says. “I saw a lot of parents in the crowd.”

“The end of the Second Task,” Tom says decisively. “I’ll make another impressive show, then give a speech in favor of peace. It’ll plant a seed, at the very least, and make them start wondering if the Ministry’s aggressive stance is flawed.”

“Dumbledore will be _right there_.”

“I know.” Tom picks up a rust-colored leaf and begins systematically tearing it to pieces.

“What if –”

“Oh, come _on_ , Harry. I though the whole point was to operate regardless of what they might do to us.”

“What they might do to _me_ ,” Harry says. “You –”

“You’re such a goddamn hypocrite.”

“I… I know.” Harry thumps down onto the ground beside him. “I know, Tom. I’m so sorry.”

“You were right, though, before,” Tom says. “We can’t let this war come out of the shadows. This is something we need to do.”

“Yeah,” says Harry. “I… yeah. It’ll be like old times.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know,” Harry says softly.

Tom sighs, trying to cut the ache of Harry’s mysteries from his heart. “I wish I could understand you, when you say things like that.”

“You wish for a lot of things.”

“I’ll learn how to break that rune on your neck, one of these days. I promise you that.”

Harry folds their hands together. “Sure, Tom.”

“So little faith,” Tom says, tracing the cracks of Harry’s time travel scars with his thumb. “You’ll see.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Harry hums. “There’s little your mind can’t accomplish, Tom.”

It doesn’t sound like a compliment.

They sit under that tree for a long time, watching as the winter wind pulls a curtain of thick white clouds over the sky. Harry drifts into a shallow sleep, his head landing in a warm weight on Tom’s shoulder.

Tom’s breath comes in puffs of fog. He tucks his nose into his scarf and bears the cold, letting it eat its way through him until his flesh is the same temperature as the graven ring resting on his finger.

 _Tom loves Harry more than he fears death_. It’s been months since his revelation back in Hogsmeade, but that same unshakeable knowledge stays rooted through every oak-driven vein in his body.

A flock of crows flicker by in the sky overhead, and Tom exhales so long and hard that he imagines the air in his lungs could join them. He feels closer to death in this moment than he had during the storm at the Battle of Hogsmeade. Closer than he had on the day Dennis Bishop drowned; closer than he had meeting the Minister’s impenetrable blue eyes on the day of the First Task.

The inevitability of the end presses on him with the weight of the occluded sky. One day, it will print him down into the loam beneath his feet, and he will be naught but worm food.

He sits, watching his breath disappear into the white of the heavens and waiting for terror to strike, until Harry finally stirs.

“Hello,” Tom says softly.

Harry wraps sleep-warm hands around the back of his neck and pulls Tom forward so their foreheads touch. He smells salty and rancid from his nap, but Tom doesn’t mind.

“You didn’t use a warming charm on yourself,” Harry chides.

“Hmm.” Tom sticks his frozen fingers under Harry’s shirt, resting them on the hard planes of his stomach.

“Tom Riddle, would you do me the honor of accompanying me to the Yule Ball?” Harry asks, light and teasing.

“You utter sap.”

Harry draws back, eyes big and gray and brimming with feigned betrayal. “Is that a no?”

Tom laughs shallowly, drawing his hands back into the cold winter air. “Oh my – _Harry_. You’re ridiculous. I swear…” He wants to touch his face so badly it hurts.

Harry cocks his head to the side, studying Tom’s face. “Can I kiss you?” he asks.

“Yes, please.”

Wrapping himself around his boyfriend in the depths of a winter-bitten wood, Tom thinks of the future. He thinks of dancing under fairy lights, speeches ringing with the flush of victory, the bang of spellfire and destruction. Of summer weddings and herb gardens, shallow graves and trees gone forever-silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick edit to clarify a point! I've been spending too much time in fandoms that hand out aro and ace headcanons like lollipops and forgot that wasn't the standard. I tend to write Harry as gray-ace, and in this fic he's asexual biromantic (maybe demiromantic as well). Lyra's written as aromantic allosexual. So... yeah! Alloace aroallo solidarity! Sorry that wasn't more clear <3


	31. Waltzes and Moonlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Calcifer try to get along, Tom tries to crack the clue of the second task, and the Yule Ball comes to Hogwarts.

The first snowfall of the year comes on the last Sunday before holiday break.

Calcifer corners Harry just after breakfast, interrupting he, Tom, and Pansy frowning over the medallion.

“I can’t figure out how to get it _open_ ,” Pansy’s saying, “but there’s definitely a seam along the edge here.”

“I don’t see it,” says Tom stubbornly.

“You’re not looking at it right.”

“I don’t see it either,” Harry adds, poking at his eggs.

Pansy huffs. “That’s because you’re not paying any attention. It’s there, though. Look, the two sides are made of slightly different brass alloys.”

Tom takes the medallion and examines it more closely, forehead creasing. “How can you even _tell_? Is there a spell to check for that?”

“I’m sure there is, but you shouldn’t need one – I mean, it’s literally a different color on each side.”

Calcifer clears his throat, looming.

“Hey, Cal,” Tom says, passing the medallion back to Pansy. “Did you need something?”

“I, uh, I was actually looking to speak with Harry,” Calcifer says, stiffly formal, mouth flattened.

Harry looks to Tom. _Did you put him up to this_?

Tom, catching his meaning, just shakes his head.

“Sure thing, Calcifer,” Harry says slowly. “I’ll just, ah…” he looks down at his eggs, but finds he’s eaten his fill. “Right. I take it you mean in private…?”

Calcifer nods sharply, looking every inch the pureblood heir: stifled, upright, blank.

Harry slouches in rebellion of Calcifer’s perfect posture as they make their way out of the Great Hall and out onto the snowy grounds. As Calcifer drags Harry through fresh snowbanks and into the shelter of a lone hemlock, looking furtively about, he has to stifle a groan.

“So,” he drawls, propping himself up against the tree and staring flatly into Calcifer’s dark eyes. “What’s this about, then? D’you still have a problem with my… how did you put it? My ‘unworthiness as a partner to Tom’?”

Calcifer frowns deeply. “That was over a year ago. I thought we’d grown beyond that petty disagreement.”

“’S’not like you’ve apologized,” Harry points out, then looks away, embarrassed. Calcifer always brings out the worst of him. “Look, I’m sorry to be so prickly, Calcifer. You’ve been perfectly civil, but I… I don’t trust you.”

“Oh,” Calcifer says. “Well, in that case: you have my sincerest apologies for any… any offence you may have incurred from our argument last year. I spoke rashly, and I see now that it was foolish to question your worthiness.”

It’s not a great apology, but Harry has been friends with Lyra for long enough to know it’s the best he’ll get out of a Black. “All right, then,” he says. “What do you want from me?”

Calcifer suddenly seems to have trouble maintaining eye contact. “You, ah. You were good with the arcade machines, right?”

Harry narrows his eyes. “I mean, sure. What does that have to do with –”

“Do you know how to work other Muggle devices? Telephones?”

“Yeah,” Harry answers, then bites his lip. He’s always forgetting to stick to his Ministry-mandated cover story. “I mean, I know the basics. The Potters have a few electronics lying around, and I can get them working well enough. Why would you come to me about this stuff? I mean, telephones have changed a lot since my, ah, my time travel, and I – I didn’t exactly have one in the house growing up –”

“Right,” Calcifer says. “Yeah. I, uh, I forgot about that?”

“Forgot?”

“That you’re a pureblood. You just seem…”

Harry scowls.

“Never mind. Just – you can do it?”

“That depends. What d’you need me to do?”

“I, um.” Calcifer fusses with his pockets and pulls out a little square of folded paper. “I have this little string of numbers, here. Thought it was a cipher for the longest time, actually – I spent months trying to crack it – but I talked with Theo and he said it looked familiar. We eventually figured out where we’d seen something similar. Ju – uh, _Finch-Fletchley_ tried to offer one to us before.”

“It’s a phone number,” Harry says drily. “Here, let me have a look.”

Calcifer hands over the scrap of paper. Harry unfolds it to find it grubby and well-worn, the string of pencil-scratched numbers annotated with incoherent black ink. The pencil’s owner drew their zeroes the same way Tom does, with a triumphant slash bisecting them left-to-right.

“Lefty,” he murmurs.

“What?” Calcifer asks.

“I… not important. Yeah, I can help you. I don’t suppose you actually _have_ a telephone?”

Calcifer shakes his head. He looks very vulnerable, snowflakes melting on his eyelashes and sticking to his woolen coat.

Harry sighs. “That figures. S’okay. I’m sure someone in the dorms will have one, or you could always have one delivered.”

Calcifer reaches out his hand for the paper and folds it carefully back into shape. “Actually, I thought we could give the Room of Requirement a try.”

“Oh – oh, you’re right. That’s a much better idea.” Harry stands back up and stretches, heading back to the castle.

“What, right now?”

“Did you have another time in mind?”

“I suppose not.”

“Then we might as well.” Harry sticks his hands in his pockets, humming contentedly. He quite likes this more nervous version of Calcifer. “Have you tried getting the Room to produce a phone before?”

Calcifer grimaces. “Yeah. I didn’t have a clear enough idea of what they look like, though, so it was completely nonfunctional.”

That raises some interesting questions about the inner workings of the Room. Harry will have to report to Tom later – he’ll want to run corroborating experiments. Nerd.

The castle is drafty and largely vacant as they make their way up to the seventh-floor corridor.

“Right,” Harry says, frowning at the blank wall where the door to the Room will appear. “D’you need anything in particular, or will any phone do?”

Calcifer huffs indignantly. “I haven’t a clue. That’s what I need your help for.”

“Uh huh. And if you’re not polite, you’ll lose that help.”

“I’ve been very polite!”

Harry rolls his eyes, but it’s a good-natured gesture. “Sure.”

He begins pacing in front of the door, eyes closed in concentration. _I need a Muggle phone._ He tries to remember the look of the sleek black phone the Dursleys had kept on the side table, always ringing with calls from “one of Dudder’s wee friends” or “Vernon’s golfing buddies” or “that nasty woman from the PTA.” Harry hadn’t been allowed to touch the thing unless he was dusting it.

He opens his eyes and finds a door set into the rough stone of the wall. The Room has gone for a nice dark red door today; if Calcifer weren’t by his side, scrutinizing his every move, Harry would have paused to whisper it a compliment. The Room _feels_ alive; nothing wrong with treating it as such.

Calcifer opens the door, then abruptly closes it again.

“Something wrong?”

“What did you _tell_ it?”

Harry shoves him aside and looks in the door. “Oh.” Before him stretches a space twice the size of an airplane hangar, brimming with what looks like centuries worth of clutter. “Is that the dragon skeleton from Longbottom’s Defense room?”

Calcifer looks over his shoulder. “Looks like it.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah, well, it’s _definitely_ not a phone. Try again.”

Harry eases the door shut and gives it an encouraging little pat. He blinks, and it disappears. “We should be careful with it,” he says. “Any sign that it’s getting annoyed, and I’m bailing.”

“Don’t be daft.”

“’M exercising caution,” Harry says. “What, have you never asked Tom where he got his scars?” He wiggles his shatter-scarred fingers illustratively.

“Time… travel…?”

Harry ignores him in favor of trying once more to summon a correct iteration of the Room. “This one might be better,” he says. “Same door, but I tried to be a lot more specific with my, er, request.”

Calcifer throws open the door to sunlight. A living room outfitted in pristine leather furniture and white rugs. Windows open to a lush garden in the height of summer. The scent of baking bread and lemon cleaning detergent.

“Oh, well _done_ ,” Calcifer enthuses, walking straight in. There’s a sleek black phone on a side table, gleamingly free of dust.

_There is a wizard in Aunt Petunia’s living room_ , Harry thinks dizzily as Calcifer sits himself elegantly down on the couch to examine the phone.

“You speak into this part, I know that much,” Calcifer says into the earpiece. “And the numbers are on buttons! Oh, it’s _just_ like the arcade.” He looks up, meeting Harry’s eyes with the air of someone about to impart a great secret. “Don’t tell the others, but I think there’s an excellent novelty to all these Muggle contraptions. I quite miss the arcade.”

Harry wets his lips. He feels as if he’s been deposited on the Durmstrang ship, the floor under his feet bucking at the whim of a hidden current.

“Say, are you quite all right?”

“Mmm.” Harry braces himself against the door, trying not to inhale the smell of the room beyond. He closes his eyes against it, struggling to school himself into equilibrium. _Breathe in_ – a lungful of lemon – _and out_. He imagines he can feel Tom’s hand on the small of his back, centering him. “I’m fine…” he says. “Oh, you’re holding it wrong.”

“Not a very intuitive design.” Calcifer clucks, pulling judgmentally on the cord.

Harry forces himself to fully enter the room, feeling all his muscles tense. _It’s just a magical construct. It’s_ fine.

“Do you mind closing the door? This is of a rather private nature.”

Harry hesitates for just a moment before nudging it shut with his foot. They’ve emerged, he realizes with no small amount of horror, from what appears to be the cupboard under the stairs.

His palms ache, and he realizes he’s digging his nails into them. _Hell_. He just needs to focus on helping Calcifer with his inane little scheme, and they can leave.

“Whose number is it, anyway?” Harry asks, sitting gingerly beside Calcifer on the couch.

“A… a Muggle’s.”

Harry rolls his eyes, but doesn’t press. Considering how dodgy Calcifer’s being, he’s honestly not sure if he _wants_ to know. “Right. Hold that bit the other way ‘round, so the wire’s on the bottom. Good. The bit on top should go against your ear – just gently, you don’t need to crush it into your head – and the other part should go a couple centimeters from your mouth.”

“Okay,” Calcifer says with the expression of a freshly-armored soldier ready to be sent off to war.

“You hear the tone?”

“Sounds like there’s a fly caught in my hair.”

“Exactly. That means it’s ready to dial.”

“Dial…?”

“Just put the numbers from your sheet of paper into the base here,” Harry says.

Calcifer, biting his lip, very deliberately depresses the ‘nine’ button. “Oh! It beeped.”

“Yup. Now do the others.”

“Okay… ahh!”

“Did it start ringing?”

“Yeah.” Calcifer cradles the phone against his ear like a child with a conch shell, waiting wonderingly for the sound of the ocean. “Oh… it’s stopped.”

Harry waits, forcing his attention to stay on Calcifer and not wander around the horribly familiar room.

“It started again!”

“It’ll do that until the person on the other side answers.”

“I understand,” Calcifer says seriously, smoothing down the front of his robes.

“They won’t be able to see you.”

“I – I knew that.”

“Of course.”

A silence descends. Harry looks down at his hands and carefully uncurls them, examining the red half-moons blooming on his palms.

“Hello,” Calcifer says suddenly, voice cracking.

“Say it into the mouthpiece.”

“ _Hello_ ,” Calcifer says, slow and loud. He’s turning gradually red, from the tips of his ears to his nose. “This is Calcifer Lestrange, second heir to Lord Orion Black. And who might you be…? What? Oh, yes, Wilhelm gave me this number… I didn’t get his last name, no, but that doesn’t… yes, that’s him. Yes. How unusual. Is that a common Muggle last name, then…? Oh! I didn’t mean to, ah – to cast aspersions as to your English descent. Goodness.”

For all Harry’s best efforts, he can’t quite make out the voice on the other end, save that it sounds like an adult man.

“Yes. Right. I’ll wait here… good-bye, Mister Riddle.”

Harry’s head snaps up.

Calcifer just shakes his head, brows furrowed.

They wait. This time, Harry can’t contain himself from turning to the window and looking outside.

The garden is not the one he remembers. It is nothing if not _wild_ , stocked with foxglove and buttercup and Queen Ann’s lace, all the same flowers he and Luna had cultivated in the resting place of the trees. He can see no edge to the field of flowers, no streets to curb their growth, no perfect cookie-cutter houses. Just the sky, the flowers, and this shell of a living room.

Harry feels himself unravel in relief, spooling loosely onto the couch. This isn’t Privet Drive, and it never will be. It’s just a simulacrum pieced together from his worst memories. He’s safe.

“Yes,” Calcifer says into the phone, so suddenly that Harry jumps. “ _Will_. I, uh – hello.”

Harry tries to pretend he isn’t listening intently, but he very much is. This new voice is much clearer, unmuddied by the gruffness of age. ‘ _Hello_ ,’ he makes out, and ‘ _didn’t think_ ,’ and ‘ _funny_.’

Calcifer looks wholly unlike himself, flushed and fidgeting. He’s grabbed one of Aunt Petunia’s lumpy lavender-scented throw pillows and started kneading it like an anxious cat. “Yes, well, I didn’t – I had to figure out how to use a phone, you see, and you weren’t exactly upfront as to the exact purpose of the number –”

Laughter rings clearly through the other side of the line. Harry hears ‘ _kidding me?_ ’ and ‘ _odd duck_.’ Despite everything, this is enough to shock a snicker out of him.

Calcifer bites his lip and opens his mouth.

‘ _Anyway_ ,’ the other voice says. It sounds like someone of around their age. If it weren’t so unlikely, Harry would almost think it sounds like – but no, he’s just been thrown off balance by Calcifer’s ‘Mister Riddle’ comment.

He can’t make out the rest of what the speaker says, but it’s enough to send Calcifer spluttering incoherently. His interlocutor laughs again. Not cruelly, but with that certain air of someone who laughs often. Harry’s reminded again of Tom.

This is not how he expected to spend his Sunday. He misses the serenity of the common room, where there are no Muggle devices, or Muggle living rooms, or strange Muggle voices –

Harry violently derails this train of thought, alarmed. When had he become so accustomed to wizarding culture that the mundane has come to repulse him?

The conversation continues. Calcifer cups the receiver to his face with a kind of gentle reverence, face bouncing freely between a dozen different flavors of joy. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “I’ll call you back… I have no idea what the number for this phone is, no… well, that’s just how things are around here!”

Harry meets his eyes, mouthing ‘ _subtle_ ’.

“No, I’m not a cultist.” Calcifer says into the receiver, scowling at Harry. “You say ‘enigmatic’ like it’s a bad thing… yes. _Yes_. You – oh, never mind that… _good-bye_ , Will.” He listens for another moment, eyes fond. “I was thinking Tuesday afternoon, if that works… right. Talk to you then.”

Harry rolls his eyes.

Calcifer _giggles_ at something the other voice says, tugging giddily on the phone’s wire. “I’ll be looking forward to it, too… okay. I’m going to hang up now.” He does not hang up.

Harry fights the urge to steal the throw pillow and scream into it. “D’you still need me here, Calcifer? I have _actual_ work that needs doing.”

“Ah! Right! I, uh, I’m terribly sorry, Will, but I really do need to go – yes. Bye.” He takes the phone away from his mouth and hesitates, looking to Harry. “How am I meant to end –”

Harry helps him hang up the phone, ignoring the stifled laughter coming from the earpiece. “Where did you manage to pick up a Muggle boyfriend?”

Calcifer looks pointedly away, putting a hand to his flushed cheeks. “I’m certain I have no idea what you mean.”

“Look, we might not be _friends_ , but I’ve known you for years, Calcifer. And I have never seen you half this flustered. Also… I’m not sure how much you know about Muggle… er, _courting rituals_ , but people giving you their phone numbers is usually meant as a flirtation.”

Calcifer brightens. “I thought that might be the case, but I wasn’t sure!” He bounces slightly on the horrible leather couch. “Oh, it’s _most_ improper, isn’t it.” He looks thrilled at the prospect.

“Yeah. You’re a real rebel,” Harry says drily. “Now, can we go?”

“Oh, yes. Of course.” Calcifer rises and makes for the door to the cupboard under the stairs. As they finally step back into the cold stone corridors of Hogwarts, he says, “thank you, Harry. I, uh, I trust that I can depend on your discretion in this matter?”

“Sure,” Harry says. “Say, Calcifer, I don’t mean to pry, but… er, who are you taking to the Yule Ball?”

Calcifer shrugs. “I’ve not thought about it much.”

“Oh.” Harry trots with him down the hall, making for the stairwell. “Have you asked someone?”

“Lyra. She said no.”

“She… she didn’t tell me.”

“I don’t think she thought it was all that important.”

Harry sighs. “Sounds about right. I’m sorry, if that makes any difference…”

Calcifer smiles. “Thanks. That actually… I don’t know. You’re not too bad, Harry.”

“I do my best,” Harry says. He feels the same way, though – he can’t go back to despising Calcifer, not after seeing the hope on his face as he talked to whoever had been on the other side of that phone call. “So. You made friends with a Muggle. How on earth did that happen?”

“Tom didn’t tell you?”

“What?”

“We went on a trip this summer down to the town where his mother was born. He wanted to see his grandfather’s grave – found it, too. I think.”

“Oh – he did tell me about that. But what does that have to do with –”

“Will lives in town. He gave us a tour. Wouldn’t take no for an answer, the rascal.”

The memory of Tom’s fifteenth birthday party, and Lord Orion Black calling Tom a ‘rascal’, hits Harry with the force of a speeding train. He must make some sort of wheezing sound, because Calcifer looks rather concerned.

“Tom had his own business to attend to, of course,” he continues, a cloud passing over his face. “So I opted to spend some time with Will, and we rather hit it off! That was when he gave me the number.”

“Right. Ah… and that first man you talked to, his name was Riddle?”

“That’s what he said. Strange, isn’t it?”

“You’ve been flirting with one of Tom’s relatives,” Harry says flatly.

Calcifer blinks. “That can’t be.”

Harry snorts. “He told me his dad had more kids later in life. I bet that first man you spoke to was one of those kids.”

“Merlin.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Should I tell Tom?”

“What, that you’re talking to Will? I dunno. I kind of doubt he’d care.”

“Oh.”

They’ve reached the stretch of wall disguising the common room.

“I don’t know,” says Calcifer. “He was, ah, he was quite upset that day. I’d prefer not to remind him.”

Harry turns to look up into his face, trying in vain to meet his eyes. “He didn’t hurt you, did he? You and Lyra have been strange around him since this summer…”

“He didn’t – it wasn’t like that. You know how volatile his magic can be.”

“It’s _volatile_ , sure, but he’s got good control! He shouldn’t be hurting people!”

Calcifer backs away a step, raising a placating hand. “Never thought I’d see the day you sided with me over Tom.”

“It’s not about _sides_ ,” Harry says. “It’s about not being a dick!”

Calcifer chuckles in weak surprise. “And what are you going to do about it?”

Harry kicks impotently at the dungeon wall. Calcifer reminds him of Draco just now – clear-sighted, incisive, making him feel _far_ too aware of how permissive he’s become of Tom’s darkness. The Black family is going to be the death of him. “I’ll – I’ll talk to Tom.”

“Have fun with that,” Calcifer says. “But don’t tell him I told you about it.”

“What? Are you afraid of him?”

Calcifer shrugs. He’s a tall boy, but at this moment he doesn’t look it.

“What did he _do_ to you?”

The entrance to the common room cracks open, spilling out a stream of chattering second-years. By the time the corridor is empty again, Calcifer has gone.

***

The last week of classes disappears like sea foam cupped between sweaty palms. A flurry of completed papers and aced practice exams, and then – nothing. Light snowfall on a Saturday morning, beholden only to the demands of holiday homework and the pressing need to discover the secrets of the medallion hung around Tom’s neck.

“It’ll be interesting to spend the holidays at Hogwarts again,” Harry muses. They sit together in the library, curled together against the chill of the grounds. They should probably move away from the window, but Harry likes to look out over the Forest and Tom likes an excuse to cuddle.

“Us and half the school,” Tom grumbles. “I’d rather have the castle to ourselves.”

“It’s not like we’re lacking for space. Hogwarts is big enough to accommodate _thousands_ more students, isn’t it?”

“It could accommodate nearly three thousand people, according to most estimates,” Tom says. “Though I think if we really needed it to, it would be more than happy to expand… that’s not the point, though. I don’t want space, I want _privacy_.” He glares around them, hoping for someone to pin the accusation upon. Unfortunately, they’re in a section of the library where no one ventures even when classes are in session, and he finds nothing but books and empty study tables.

Harry laughs softly, contorting so he can follow Tom’s gaze. “I think you’re just being grumpy.”

“Grumpy? Hardly. What cause would I have to be grumpy?”

“You still haven’t cracked the clue for the Second Task.” Harry lays his head back down on Tom’s chest. “You’re trying to relax right now, but you still can’t stop yourself from thinking about it.”

Tom mulls this analysis over. “Huh. Maybe you’re right. When did you get so good at all that… emotion stuff?”

“I didn’t. The medallion is digging into my shoulder.”

“Oh! Here, I’ll move –”

“Don’t bother. No, truth be told it’s been eating at me, too. All our plans rest on you doing well at the Second Task, but until we know what’s waiting for you…”

“There’s no way to prepare.”

“Yeah. All the natural talent in the world won’t be enough if we don’t manage to open that ridiculous trinket.”

“I went into this thinking the ‘trial of wit’ would be the easiest of the three,” Tom says mournfully, letting his hand drop away from Harry’s waist to hang limply below them.

Harry scoffs. “Such _drama_.”

Tom hums. “I think it must have a command phrase,” he says. “A password that the medallion’s been keyed to open for. We just need to do more research, I suppose…”

“I suppose,” Harry says. “But I think we should take a break for the next week or so.”

“A break? But we finally have time to work right now!”

“You’re just going to burn yourself out.” Harry sits up, smiling. “How about this: from now to the Yule Ball, no more worrying about the Tournament, or N.E.W.T.’s, or the war, or any of that.”

“I don’t know if that’s a luxury we can afford, Harry.”

“C’mon, Tom. For just five days, can we just… just be seventeen-year-olds? Please.”

Two and a half years of exposure lend Tom no immunity to those pleading gray eyes. “All right, then. Five days.”

***

It’s far too easy for Tom to give himself over to those days of true vacation.

Harry pulls him outside, into the banks of freshly fallen snow that cloak the Forest. A few older Hufflepuffs try to muster up a fort-building effort like the one from their fifth year, but Tom and Harry decline – Henry’s loss is still too fresh a wound, and the thought of constructing snow towers without him feels like a betrayal.

“He’d probably want us to pitch in,” Harry offers weakly. They’re sitting by the side of the frozen Black Lake, scudding progressively larger stones across the surface and waiting for one to break the ice.

“I don’t _want_ to pitch in,” Tom says. “Henry’s ghost will just have to get used to me not bowing to its every whim.”

Harry socks him lightly in the shoulder. “Have some respect for the departed.”

“He wouldn’t want that.”

“Huh.”

“You miss him?” Tom asks.

“We should have had more than just two Christmases together. ‘S not right.”

Tom glances over at him, wary for a hint of tears, but Harry just looks thoughtful.

“D’you know what he _would_ want us to do?”

“What?”

“Go spend time with Geoff and Dahl. C’mon, Tom.”

And so, the days before the Yule Ball whirl by.

They teach Dahlia the way to the kitchens, lose snowball fights against Geoff and his Gryffindor friends, and smuggle the younger Potters down to the Slytherin common room to roast hazelnuts in the fireplace.

At night, they sneak through the moonlit common room out to the Forest and race together in their animal forms. Numb-hooved and exhausted, they lose hours to stargazing and frost-sweet kisses.

Tom holds Harry against him, lost in the woods in the dead of winter, and thinks that he might just be in love.

***

The day of the ball dawns clouded and miserable, edged with sleeting sheets of frozen rain. Hogwarts buzzes with frenetic energy – people dance in the hallways, their faces tense with determination; owls carrying bulky packages sweep across the Great Hall; and Tom gets no less than three desperate students asking him to come with them to the ball. It’s ridiculous.

Harry seems to be in somewhat of a foul mood, though Tom thinks that might be because the last of the proposals was in front of him.

“You doing all right?” Tom asks him at lunch, leaning over to steal a bit of candied apple off his plate.

Harry shoves the entire plate at him, making a face. “Yeah… it’s just stressful to be around this many anxious people, y’know?”

Tom shrugs, helping himself to another piece of fruit.

“Of course, you like the chaos, don’t you? You’re probably thrilled to see everyone in this state.”

Tom smirks.

“You’re going to regret this,” Harry warns him. “A couple hours from now, and you’ll… oh, who am I kidding. You _love_ the spotlight. _Ugh_.”

“Are you really that nervous about having to dance in front of everyone?” Tom asks.

Harry frowns. “Yeah, actually. A bit.”

“You’ll be fine,” Tom says, reluctantly amused. “Just think of it like a… a Quidditch thing. Like you’re performing one of your little broom exercises for the school.”

“A drill?” Harry pauses, seeming to be seriously considering the metaphor. “But on the ground, and with, like, fancy robes on.”

“Shouldn’t be too different.”

“Tom, your lack of basic understanding about Quidditch never fails to amaze.”

Tom snorts. “I’m going to take that as a compliment. I hardly want my head to be full of such nonsense as – as broom models, or whatever you spend all your time obsessing over.”

“Huh. I distinctly remember you singing a different tune two years ago. ‘ _Oh, Harry, I’ve always wanted to learn to fly_ …’”

Tom throws a chunk of apple at his forehead, flushing.

Pansy looks up from her newspaper, frowning. “Do try to show some decorum,” she says crisply. Tom thinks she might just be worried about getting food crumbs in her hair, which she and Lyra had spent nearly an hour working on.

“I don’t see why you’re already all fancied up,” Harry says, apparently thinking along a similar vein.

“I’m seeing if I like this style,” Pansy says. “And the ball starts at four o’clock – we have hardly three hours left! It’s not my fault the rest of you are lagging behind.”

Susan laughs softly, elbowing Pansy in the side. “You just want to have your own styling out of the way so you can help the rest of us out.”

“Perhaps that’s part of it,” Pansy sniffs. “So you should all be kinder to me, and hope that I decide to extend my generosity to you.”

“James said he’d help get me ready,” Harry says, face clearing slightly. “So I’ll have to decline this time, Pans. Thanks, though.”

“If you’re offering,” says Tom casually, “I’d take you up on that.”

Pansy brightens. “Of course, Tom! Susan…?”

“I’d like that.” Susan blushes, glancing at Peryle. “Thanks, Pansy.”

Harry disappears after lunch to see James, and Tom returns to the common room to find a robe of billowing white and rich olive waiting in their bedroom.

Pansy claps in appreciation at the sight of it. “Oh, those colors will look _lovely_ on Harry!”

“And me?”

“Everything looks lovely on you, Tom.”

“I… thank you?”

“Now get dressed.” Pansy bounces on the balls of her feet, looking thrilled to be in charge. “I’m going to have all the others do the same, and then we’ll work on everything else.” She gestures at his face.

Tom touches his hair, feeling uncommonly self-conscious. “Yes, ma’am.”

The robes flow in layers down his body, all cold, smooth silk and floral embroidery. They should be heavy, but they feel light as morning dew against his skin.

He drifts out into the little private common room at the end of their dorm hallway and curls up on his and Harry’s couch to wait.

Michael joins him within a few minutes, then Susan, Peryle, and Theo.

They all look very nice, Tom is pleased to note: Susan and Peryle in matching deep red robes, Theo in a peacock-hued jacket that looks simultaneously vintage and fresh, and Michael in well-fitting black.

Pansy spins in, dressed in robes of sweet periwinkle, hair glittering with tiny preserved snowflakes. “Too much?” she asks, gesturing to her hair.

“Not at all,” Susan says. “You look beautiful.”

Michael wets his lips, staring – so _that’s_ still going on. Tom isn’t sure whether to pity Michael or not.

“Thank you.” Pansy beams. “Do you want me to do the same for you?”

“I don’t know if it would look as nice in pale hair,” Susan says. “Peri?”

Peryle blinks. “Yes, Pansy, I think that would be lovely.”

“I’ll teach you the spell!” Pansy says, swishing the hem of her robes in delight. “First, though, hair!”

Tom leans against the back of his couch, waiting his turn. He’s not sure what to make of all this – part of it indulges his vain streak, but he can’t bring himself to embrace acting as Pansy’s dress-up doll.

Still, when it comes his time to have his hair done, he finds himself relaxing into the soft tug of cosmetic magics rearranging his curls, letting his eyes drift shut upon the Pansy cooing over his head.

Eventually, she subsides, placing a finger against his chin to have him look up at her. “Nice. Okay, Tom, give me a smolder.”

He frowns slightly, trying to puzzle out her meaning. This is a piece of nineties slang he hasn’t picked up on yet –

“Perfect,” Pansy says, smirking. “There you go. That’ll do nicely. Theo, thoughts?”

Theo looks up from gingerly feeling the shape of his slicked-back hair. “Hmm? Oh. Huh. Well done, Pans.”

“I’d say you clean up nice, Riddle,” Michael says drily, “but we already know you’re pretty. ‘S a good look, though, Pansy. Well done.”

“Thank you very much,” says Pansy smugly. “Now, how do you feel about makeup, Tom?”

***

James combs product into Harry’s hair with a gentleness born from years of practice.

“Is Geoff going to need your help getting ready, too?” Harry asks, leaning into the touch.

“He inherited your mother’s hair texture,” James says with a soft laugh. “Low-maintenance. He'll have fun getting ready with his friends, I think – much more interesting than hanging out with us older folk.”

Harry’s knee bounces in delight. For all his faults, James always treats him like an adult. He likes it.

“We never had a Yule Ball during our time at Hogwarts,” James continues. “It was all about the smaller events that pureblooded families hosted. We’d dress up fancy and pretend to be grown, then spend all our time flirting and making mischief.” He chuckles. “Your generation is a bit more mature, I think.”

“I wouldn’t be sure of that,” Harry says, thinking of the blazing row between two younger Ravenclaws that had interrupted their most recent Defense club meeting.

“More reserved, then. This really takes me back, though… I remember my own seventh year, seeing your mother dressed all in blue and white, waiting to formally meet my parents. She was such a serious little thing back then. You remind me of her.”

“You still love her,” Harry realizes. “Even after everything, how do you…?”

James’s hands still on his scalp. “Of course I still love her,” he says, voice scratchy. “How could I ever _not_?”

“I – I just thought – with Snape –”

“Oh, Harry. There are so many ways to love. Lily has owned my heart for almost as long as I’ve known her. We’ve built a life together. We’re partners. Sometimes sex is just… sex. Your mother can do as she likes with her body, as far as I’m concerned.”

“I don’t – did you know about Dahlia? Why didn’t you –”

“Lily never lied to me. We came to an understanding years ago. Like I said, we’re _partners_.”

Harry scowls, the image of Tom and Draco kissing in that tawdry little café flashing before his eyes. He can’t imagine applying the same rationale to his own relationships. “I don’t get it.”

“Most people don’t.” James goes back to styling his hair. “But it’s what works for us. I just wish the tabloids didn’t feel the need to butt in, hmm?”

Harry grunts in acknowledgement and lets his mind drift away, thoughts falling like snowflakes. Down below, he knows Tom sits in the dungeon, letting himself be preened over by their dormmates. _There are so many ways to love…_

***

Harry’s running late.

Tom stands with some of his friends from Ravenclaw, engaging them in idle conversation about the Yuletide decorations. The Headmistress has transfigured a gleaming glacier-cut chandelier to hang over the Great Hall, suspended like an alien mothership descending from the false sky. Grand pine trees stand at every corner of the Hall, gilt in gold and candlelight. Holly garlands trim the walls, and the scent of cinnamon and orange zest hangs over their heads.

Five minutes to four o’clock – five minutes to the champion’s dance. And still, no Harry. Tom taps a finger against his thigh, unable to tamp down his nervous energy. If he has to be the one to explain to some professor that _no, sir, I_ do _have a date – he’ll be along shortly, I’m sure_ … ugh. He’s going to hex Harry’s ears off.

“Hello, Tom,” says a voice behind him, and Tom turns, frustrations flying away like dust.

Harry looks beautiful in olive and white. The colors play off the deceptive gray of his glamoured eyes and the fall of his dark hair, while the cut of the robes hangs cleanly from his athletic frame. And Tom isn’t sure what James has done to his hair – certainly not _tamed_ it – but it looks artfully, roguishly mussed, not just unkempt. The overall effect is quite striking. “You’re late,” Tom says, smiling to soften it. He holds out his elbow in invitation.

Harry just stares at him, breathing hard. He must have run to get here.

“The champions and their dates are meant to meet with Professor Sinistra out in the room behind the head table,” Tom prompts him. “We should go now, or we’ll be in trouble.”

Harry blinks uncomprehendingly. “Are… is that _eyeliner_?”

Tom clears his throat, feeling a blush spreading up his neck. “Pansy offered.”

“Fuck.”

“Uh… do you like it?”

“Hngh.”

“Right.” Tom pulls at the collar of his dress robes. “I’m going to take that as a yes. Now, we should really be going.”

Harry loops his arm through Tom’s, still looking distracted.

Sinstra clucks approvingly when they finally show up. The others are already there – Omar on the arm of another Beauxbatons student, Katarina with –

“Hi, Ron,” Harry says.

“Harry! Tom! Good to see you two,” Ron says with a winning smile. Dressed in black, hair swept back from his face, a blue flower pinned to his lapel, he looks very dashing indeed.

“I didn’t know you and Katarina were acquainted,” says Tom.

“Ronald is a recent acquisition,” Katarina says, smiling a bit _too_ widely.

“Katarina asked me to accompany her to the ball about two weeks back,” Ron says lazily. “I said yes. We had talked all of twice before then… I think she just wanted me for arm candy.”

“You _do_ look very handsome tonight,” Harry says, sounding so sincere that a prickle of jealousy springs to life in Tom’s belly.

Ron preens slightly. “Thank you.”

Katarina pats his arm absently, her attention drifting to the bookshelf at the side of the room.

“Right,” Sinistra says, clapping briefly to gather them. “It’s time. I trust you’re all ready?”

Harry pulls a face of restrained disgust. Tom elbows him and murmurs, “it’s going to be okay. You trust me, right?”

“Of course,” he answers immediately.

Tom squeezes his hand.

A snatch of flute melody filters through the door to the Great Hall, picking out the very beginnings of a waltz. Tom taps his toe within the confines of his sharp black dress shoes, picking out the beat. “Just like Quidditch,” he murmurs. “You’re a talented performer, Harry. This should be easy for you.”

Harry snorts, clinging to his side as Sinistra ushers them onto the cleared floor of the Hall. The noise of the crowd swells as the champions come into view.

Tom tilts up his chin and smiles out at them, finding Draco’s and Calcifer’s familiar faces among the mass.

Harry lets go of his arm so he can rest his hand on Tom’s waist, his eyes steady and bright.

Tom places his hand on Harry’s back and stands so his feet are shoulder-length apart. “Ready?”

“Of course.”

The two of them have never actually danced together before, Tom realizes as they begin. Harry is a good dancer – a better dancer than Tom, if he’s honest with himself. He moves with characteristic grace, and as they find their rhythm Tom feels the muscles in his back gradually relax.

“So,” says Tom, letting Harry pull them around the corner. “Ron and Katarina. That’s not a match I expected. I always got the impression that Ron and Hermione had some kind of unspoken attraction – I assumed they would be coming together.”

“And by ‘got the impression’, you mean…?”

“I looked into their minds, yes. Not on purpose. No one in this school knows how to think _quietly_.”

Harry chuckles. “Like I said: this stupid ball just causes useless drama. This happened last time, too.”

“What, Ron and the Durmstrang champion had a night of fiery passion?”

“Ew, don’t put it like _that_ ,” Harry glances over Tom’s shoulder, probably watching Ron’s and Katarina’s dance. “You don’t think those two –”

Tom shrugs. “Don’t think either of them would be opposed.”

“Huh. Well, no, last time it was _Hermione_ with the Durmstrang champion.”

Tom bites his lip to stifle a laugh. “Ironic.”

“I suppose so.”

They fall comfortably silent after that, losing themselves in the work of planning footfalls and holding one another amidst the swarms of conjured snowflakes. Tom hardly notices when the first song ends and other couples step out onto the dance floor.

After their third dance, Tom calls for a break. “I’m sorry,” he says, picking up a drink from a refreshment-laden table and taking a sip. “I know you were enjoying yourself, but I’m not as fit as you. I just need a bit of a breather.”

“It’s no bother,” Harry says, standing on his tiptoes to give Tom a peck on the lips. “Ooh, I like the spices in that cider.”

Indulgently, Tom offers Harry a sip of the newly-acquired drink. “You can go dance with someone else, you know.”

“I know,” says Harry. “But I don’t _want to_ , you see.”

“Flatterer,” Tom grumbles, nudging Harry with his elbow.

“Aw, lookit you. Blushing.”

“Hush.”

Harry stretches up on his toes again, putting his hands on Tom’s shoulders so he can peer straight into his face.

“What?”

“I like the eyeliner.”

“You said,” Tom says softly. There’s a strange weight to this moment, and despite their crowded surroundings he feels as though he and Harry are the only people in this grand, beautiful room.

Harry looks unlike himself. Something about the hair product adds an air of maturity to his presentation; at the same time, he looks younger than usual, as though his calluses were shaved away by the dancing. Tom feels like he’s glimpsing a ghost of the future, a happier Harry that could someday be.

He itches to pull off the disguise pendant and see how Harry’s true face looks above those beautiful robes.

_I want to see all the faces he wears throughout his life_ , Tom realizes. _I want to see him grow old_. What a strange thought. Part of him rebels against the notion of it: of Harry’s body falling into ruin, hair fading and skin creasing, but the alternative is somehow worse. The thought of Harry rendered static, frozen forever as a single _self_ , would corrupt his being more surely than the years will corrupt his body.

Tom feels that sensation from the woods settle onto his bones again, the cold blanket of closeness with death. He's known for years that he was not made for _dying_ , that he could chain himself to life with the magic that was his birthright. But giving himself to death – allowing himself to be _finite_ – there’s a certain poetry to the thought.

He opens his mouth to say some of this, to impart this revelation upon Harry, but all that falls out is, “Do you want to go make out in the courtyard?”

Harry beams. “Thought you’d never ask.”

They dodge their way through the crowd and outside. The sky has grown dark, an indigo prelude to the coming night softened by a waxing moon on the horizon. Hedges line the path, sculpted to look like flying horses, hydras, and ancient heroes.

“They’re really leaning into the theme of Hellenistic myths, aren’t they?” Harry asks, pressing his shoulder against Tom’s.

Tom frowns. “You’re right. It’s a bit excessive, honestly…”

“Hey, you don’t suppose –?”

“It’s a clue?” Tom stops in the path, surveying the hedge sculptures around them. A lion, a boar, a dragon, a Cerberus – all the labors of Heracles. Each of the monsters is paired with a shrubbery molded in the shape of a man, locked in a bloody tableau.

Harry lets go of Tom’s arm in favor of wandering over to one of the statues.

Tom turns in a circle, counting off the labors. Labor one: the Nemean lion. Labor two: the Lernean Hydra. Labor three… “They haven’t done one for the third labor,” Tom says. “There should be a sculpture of a Ceryneian hind.”

“Look,” Harry says, pointing to one of the Heracles figures. It is on its knees, hands out in supplication, staring out at the sky just above the Forest. “This one’s alone – aren’t they all meant to be in combat?”

“It’s not alone,” Tom says, pulling the medallion out of his robes. “It’s… it’s looking up at the moon.”

“What?”

“The third labor wasn’t just about Heracles catching the hind. It was about doing so without incurring the wrath of Artemis, goddess of the moon and the hunt.” Tom pulls the chain of the medallion over his head and holds the disk out in front of him. It fits perfectly against the crescent of the rising moon.

“Right,” Harry says. “Makes sense. So… now what?”

“Some sort of voice command.” Tom thinks for a moment, then clears his throat. “I promise to return the hind to the wild.” Nothing. “I… ah, I have returned the hind to the Forest.”

“I think you’re overcomplicating it,” Harry says. “Try something more simple.”

“All right… _forgive me_.”

And just like that, the medallion cracks open like a clamshell. Tom brings it closer, heart leaping with anticipation.

“Oh,” he says.

“What is it? Instructions?”

“Just… just the letter ‘V’. Five in Roman numerals.”

“The fifth labor,” Harry guesses. “Which one was that? The flesh-eating birds?”

Tom groans. “I wish. No, this is going to be so much worse.”

“Oh, don’t tell me –”

“The Augean stables,” Tom confirms gravely. “Heracles had to clean out decades’ worth of cow shit.”

“You still want to make out?” Harry offers weakly.

Tom rubs his eyes. “Anything to distract me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Calcifer and Harry working together? Never thought we'd see the day.


	32. Ankles Unchained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom faces the second task.

They’re in the library, barely five minutes before curfew, when Percy Weasley comes for Harry.

“Have you considered elephants?” Harry is saying.

Tom breathes out softly through his nose, running his hands through his hair. “I know what you’re thinking, and no. That won’t work.”

“But –”

“Conjured animals operate on different rules than real ones. If I summon an elephant, it will look and act and – and _die_ like a real animal, but it won’t _be_ one. It’s like giving a concept flesh. It can’t affect the elements.”

“Beavers?”

“I – that’s the same problem!”

“No it isn’t. They make their dams out of trees, right? And trees are organic, so –”

Tom drums his fingers on the table. “Huh. You’re not wrong… still, we’ll be on a tight timeline. It doesn’t matter how many animals I summon – it would take at least a week to make the kind of geological changes we need –”

“Excuse me.”

Tom looks up to see Percy in perfectly-creased navy robes, looking stiff and uncomfortable. “Hello, Percy. Is this about the task tomorrow? If not, I’m going to have to politely ask you to come find me again tomorrow afternoon. I can’t spare any time from my preparations.”

Percy clears his throat. “Of course, Mister Riddle. I’ll leave you to your studies. It’s actually Mister Potter I needed to speak to.”

Harry and Tom lock eyes, mutually confused for a brief moment. Then realization dawns on Harry’s face. “Oh, not again,” Harry says. “Really? They’re pulling the whole hostage thing on us?”

Tom grips the arms of his chair.

“I – I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Percy says, eyes bulging. He’s a terrible liar.

“Hostages?” Tom asks dangerously.

“It’s none of your concern, Tom,” Percy says, giving up the act. “Just business, putting on a show… you know how it is.”

Harry purses his lips.

“Wait –” Tom shuts his book. “You two – _Harry_.”

“They’re doing a spot of kidnapping to add spice to the Tournament,” Harry says, sounding bored. “I didn’t expect they’d do that this year, but I suppose I’m not surprised… I’ve learned not to expect too much from _certain_ departments of the Ministry.”

Percy opens his mouth. “Now, see here –”

Tom pulls out a chair. “Sit down. We can talk this through. I know you’re just trying to do your job.”

Percy hesitates another moment, then drops into the seat and begins fastidiously cleaning his glasses. “How on earth could you know about this?”

“None of your business,” Tom says sharply, leaning forward. “You’re not kidnapping my boyfriend, Weasley.”

“I – I’m not,” Percy says. “I’m not supposed to tell you about the particulars, but, um –”

“The cat’s out of the bag on that one, I think,” Harry says. “Might as well spill. Not like it’ll change the outcome of the task.”

“Right,” says Percy slowly, looking warily between them. Seems he’s finally realized how vulnerable he’s made himself; this late in the evening, they’re the only people left in the library. “I was instructed to bring Harry up to the Headmistress’s office. The Minister and the Heads of each school are up there right now, meeting… I think they’re going to take a loved one of each of champions, then use them as, ah, as an incentive for the champions to perform adequately.”

Tom hisses in displeasure.

“It’ll be perfectly safe!” Percy says. “I promise. They wouldn’t put innocents in danger like that.”

Harry laughs darkly. “You want to entrust me to Dumbledore’s care, with the promise that he _wouldn’t hurt an innocent_? Percy… you know what I did at the end of last year.”

Percy pales. “Ah. Right.”

“It doesn’t really matter, though, does it?” Harry stretches. “They need to take _someone_.”

“They can have Calcifer,” Tom says stubbornly. “Not you.”

“Don’t be daft,” says Harry. “Percy has his orders, and we wouldn’t want to make trouble for him… I might not trust Dumbledore, but we need to do what we can to stay in his good graces for the moment.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I. Still, think of how romantic it’ll be… you, hauling me out of danger; me, awakening in your arms…”

“Idiot.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry says, patting the back of his fisted hand. “It’ll be okay, Tom. You’ll blow them all away, all right?”

“All right,” Tom says, accepting a chaste kiss. “If they harm a hair on your head, I’ll duel the Minister myself.”

“I don’t doubt it,” says Harry drily.

Percy, his eyebrows creeping higher up his forehead with their every word, jumps to his feet. “We’ll be off, then… uh, good luck tomorrow, Mister Riddle.”

Tom just watches as Percy gently takes Harry by the elbow and escorts him away.

 _Hell_. This Tournament is going to be the death of him.

***

 _At least_ , Tom thinks, _there isn’t any horse shit involved_. It’s a paltry comfort.

He stands with the other champions on the bank of a wide river, upstream from the Black Lake. Another task to take place in the Forest, then. Normally, he would be able to see the castle from here, but today there’s an enormous viewing platform in the way.

Is it just him, or does today’s crowd look bigger than the one in November…? Hundreds of wizards packed onto ephemeral benches, clustered together against the bite of late winter. This is no abandoned stadium like the one where they had captured the hinds. The crowd is too distant for Tom to see their faces, but he imagines hunger in their watching eyes.

The Tournament is a spectator sport. In submitting his name to the Goblet, he gave himself to this scrutiny. Besides, he’s _Tom_ _Riddle_ , made for the stage –

Dumbledore watches from the judge’s table, cloaked in black, beard braided precisely.

This is fine.

Tom forces his attention back to the river in front of him, flexing his fingers.

Barely ten meters away, atop a pillar of stone jutting from the river, sits Harry. He looks fully awake and utterly unimpressed. Beside him sit the Omar’s date to the Yule Ball and an unfamiliar girl from Durmstrange, looking respectively terrified and irritable.

Harry yawns, swinging his feet.

Biting down a smile, Tom tunes back in to Ludo Bagman’s grating voice explaining the task. “As you can all see, each of our champions is meant to rescue one of the three hostages… note the chains around each of their ankles? Enchanted by the Minister himself!”

Tom jolts, the beginnings of an idea starting to gnaw at the edges of his thoughts.

“Now, these chains can only be broken by undoing a special lock located at the base of that pillar – and the lock can only be undone if it’s dry!”

 _Ah_. Heracles had achieved his fifth trial, mucking the Augean stables, by redirecting the flow of a river to flow through them and cleanse their filth. He and Harry had expected a far more literal interpretation, but this _is_ meant to be a test of wit.

“You all are encouraged to use any methods you choose,” Bagman continues. “But the champion who manages to redirect the flow of the river first will be rewarded accordingly.”

At Tom’s left, Katarina scowls down at the river. Apparently feeling his eyes on her, she looks up, exposing herself to his Legilimency. _Dread-sharp nerves-fear_. _This isn’t what I thought – don’t show weakness – think of Lena_. Tom rips himself free of her mind with a grimace. Katarina’s not as Dark as he is, but she still isn’t capable of the kind of elemental magic this task will require.

To his right, Omar looks serene and unbothered. A small smile rounds his cheeks. He doesn’t return Tom’s gaze, but Tom doesn’t need to look into his mind to sense his confidence.

Right. A task based entirely on Light magic, and Tom needs not just to _win_ , but to win so spectacularly that he can deliver an anti-war message without looking like a coward. No problem.

“And with that,” Bagman says. “We begin!”

Tom breathes in sharply through his nose and whirls his wand up. Katarina and Omar shout in surprise as the thick grass under their feet shoots up around them, tangling in their limbs and binding their arms to their sides.

“ _Riddle_ ,” Katarina spits. “ _Gelbbauchig – auswurf – ich bring dich um_ –”

Ignoring her, Tom transfigures the grass into tree roots, pouring magic into them until they’re strong enough that she stops struggling.

Omar hangs limply, glaring and mouthing words. With a lazy wand movement, Tom has his plants grow into his open mouth.

The crowd has gone silent, shocked.

“ _Stupefy_ ,” Tom incants, knocking out his two defenseless opponents. A shout rises up from the audience, and the Durmstrang girl upon the pillar looks like she’s considering diving in to strangle Tom herself.

“They’re allowed to use any means at their disposal!” Ludo calls to the outraged crowd. “He’s – ah – he’s not technically breaking any rules…”

Tom sinks down onto the bank, trying to think. If he were Daphne, he could cast a Bubble-Head charm on himself, then swim to the bottom of the river and do some clever elemental manipulation to dry out the locks without having to redirect the river. If he were Harry, he could brute-force evaporate the problem away.

For the thousandth time, he curses his imbalanced magic. He and Harry hadn’t prepared for this eventuality. All of their research had focused on the _problem_ of Heracles’ fifth trial, not the _solution_.

Tom meets Harry’s eyes across the rapids. Harry, who seems to be trying to calm his fellow hostages, just shrugs.

Ridiculous task. Tom decides to blame Dumbledore. For now, though – well. He might not have Daphne’s or Harry’s skill with elemental magics, but he’s in the Forest, the seat of his power.

Tom turns away from the pillars and the trussed-up champions and strides away upstream. What was it that Harry had suggested yesterday? Something about beavers?

A dam of conjured trees would serve the job nicely, but this needs to be a _spectacle_ , something so impressive that the gathered wizards will look beyond his underhanded tactics.

Dark magic isn’t flashy, though. It’s subtle, insidious, beautiful – but rarely does it come with the drama this task will require.

Transfiguration, Tom thinks. Of the Dark Arts, vertebrate Transfiguration is the most interesting to watch…

It won’t be enough. He can reanimate a dragon skeleton, grow the trees around him into behemoths, tame beasts as wild as the hinds, and dispatch his opponents with ease, but this – this has to be a transcendent display. He has to _show up Dumbledore_.

Oh. _Oh_. There’s his answer, then. So simple, and yet –

He’s losing time. He locks eyes with Harry and nods sharply, feeling his dread ebb away. Tom has a plan, now, impossible as it may be, and that will have to be enough.

He picks up a smooth river rock and tosses it into the sloshing current. As it flies, it shifts, erupting with pure white plumage and a long, sleek neck: a swan the length of a small boat, waiting patiently for him to sit on its back.

The crowd _ooh_ s, and there’s a smattering of applause as Tom steps gingerly on board and sets off toward the high outcropping where the hostages wait. The swan steers true, paddling with sinuous strength, and before long they come to rest at the foot of the pillar. It’s made of dark, rough rock that Tom guesses was summoned up from the earth under the Forest.

Grimacing, he shucks off his robes and throws them into the drink, leaving his forearms bare. Already, the spray from the river has soaked his boots. That’s all right; if he can pull this off, no one will be paying attention to the state of his shoes.

He leans forward, grasping for one of the long, silvery chains that bind the ankle of each hostage to the magical locking mechanism secured somewhere deep below them. Harry’s still watching him, leaning over the edge to stare – confusion in his eyes, but no alarm. He still trusts that Tom knows what he’s doing.

Of _course_ Tom knows what he’s doing.

He takes hold of a chain, then releases it with a shout, shaking his hand – it feels like he’d just stuck it into a patch of stinging nettles. Damn it all. The old man really did consider everything.

Tom resists the urge to stick his wounded fingers in his mouth. Setting his jaw and concentrating, he places the tip of his wand against his right hand, right over the epicenter of the scar tissue. Within moments, the flesh shifts, swarming with fish scales the muddy silver of a cauldron bottom.

This time, when he grabs a chain, it doesn’t sting him. The spell dances like electricity under his armored hand, searching for skin to bite away at.

Three pairs of eyes look down on Tom from above: one fearful, one suspicious, and the last curious. Tom breathes in deeply, ignoring them. _God_ , he hopes he can pull this off.

He closes his eyes against the river spray, letting everything but the chain of magic in his grip fade from his senses. It stretches down another three meters to the riverbed below, and two meters up to the ankle of Omar’s hostage. Layers of spells, bound together like a rope, then – what? Forged into links of silver? No. Anchored to something deep below – _there_. A gem of some kind, etched with runes.

If he can just destroy the physical anchor, the enchantments on the chain will be gone, and he’ll be able to free Harry through more mundane means. With a little bit of trickery and showmanship, he could make it look as though he had overpowered Dumbledore’s enchantments through sheer magical ability. With that, who would dare stand against him?

Tom licks his lips, tasting victory, and plucks a feather from the back of his conjured swan. Hidden from the crowd, he transfigures it into an eel and casts it into the river. Through the conjuration’s eyes, he stares through the murk of the river and flashes down to the muddy bottom to find –

A box, metal and unyielding, with pinprick drainage holes on the sides. He sends the eel closer, but when it touches the box that same nettle-sting sensation erupts in its nose.

Cursing, face screwed up in sympathetic pain, Tom abandons the conjuration and returns to himself.

Fine. This is – well. Perhaps he _will_ have to brute-force this. He is, after all, Tom Riddle, scion of the lost Gaunt family, heir of Slytherin, oak-speaker, prodigal child…

He grabs a different chain with his scaly hand – the one attached to Harry, this time – and sends an experimental jolt of formless magic down it.

“Oi!” says Harry from above. The chain jerks in Tom’s hand as he kicks his foot out.

“Yes?” Tom calls back acidly. “I’m trying to get you out of this. Don’t be difficult.”

“It tickled,” says Harry, petulant. “That’s all.”

“Tough,” Tom grumbles, then stops. “What – you felt that?”

Harry nods.

“Harry… you don’t happen to have your wand on hand, do you?”

“They took it,” Harry says.

“Do me a favor and grab your chain?”

Harry leans down and pulls his foot up onto the stone next to him, then pokes warily at the link nearest his ankle. Then he grabs it fully. “It’s tingly,” he says, “but not painful. I assume it hurt you when you touched it?”

“Yeah.” Tom sends another pulse of magic into the bonds.

Harry makes a face. “What are you trying to accomplish, anyway?”

“Just testing a theory. Can you try and send some magic back down?”

Tom holds back a yelp as an electric shock slams into him from the chain, unperturbed by his fish scale gloves.

“I think this is cheating,” Katarina’s hostage comments, baring her teeth at Harry. “I’m going to tell the judges you two are collaborating.”

“They would have knocked us out if they didn’t want us to help,” Harry says.

“They _took our wands_.”

“Hush.” Tom releases the chain so he can shake his aching hand out. “Harry, I need you to do that again, but more gently this time. I’m going to try and unravel the spells on this chain, but it’s got a powerful anchor… I – I need your magic.”

“You want me to force-feed you raw magic through a length of chain,” Harry interprets dubiously. “Is that even a _thing_? I don’t think that’s how magic works, Tom. One person can’t just use another person’s power.”

Tom grits his teeth. “Just – just _trust_ me, okay?” He can feel the strands of Dumbledore’s spells; this is possible. Theoretically.

“Okay.”

A trickle of pain shoots down the chain, an unsteady, distracting burn. Tom smells ozone and copper – he’s bitten down on his own tongue. _Breathe_ , he tells himself in a voice that sounds like Harry’s. No, one wizard can’t use another’s magic without some _seriously_ Dark soul magic and years of preparation. But he _knows_ Harry’s magic – this will be like redirecting lightning, with his body and wand as a conduit.

Tom is starting to think that it would have been easier to just spontaneously manifest a proficiency with water magic.

He closes his eyes again, letting his awareness fade to nothing but the parallel lines of fire in his grasp. Just Tom, Dumbledore’s intricate sun-white weaving of spells, and the electric intensity of Harry’s magic.

Tom pokes the chain with his wand, slams the two streams of power together, and twists one of Dumbledore’s spells _just so_ – the pain in his hand reaches a fever pitch – he feels something deep beneath the water give way –

 _Oh thank God, he’s fucking done it_ –

Now for the easy part.

Tom whirls to face the crowd, balancing on the back of his swan, and bows. Behind his back, his wand executes a series of looping gestures, and the eel from before erupts from the river, eyes blazing red, great feathery wings arcing from its back.

It takes Harry’s chain neatly between its jaws, snaps the metal with ease, and promptly dissolves into a mass of fluttering blood-red petals.

Tom looks up just in time to catch a splash in the water to his left. He reaches out a hand to haul a sodden, shivering Harry onto the back of the swan.

“Well done,” Harry says, shaking his head like a dog. “Are we going to deal with the others, or –”

“While they’re still chained, the task isn’t over.” Tom nudges the swan into movement, steering it out of the storm of petals and onto the bank. “That gives us something of a captive audience, I suppose you could say.”

Harry hums, settling in and holding Tom by the waist. He’s damp and clammy, but it’s worth it for the calm his closeness lends Tom. Gradually, his pulse begins to return to normal. By the time the swan deposits them on the bank, he feels his usual confidence return in full.

He hauls himself off the swan and offers Harry a gentlemanly hand, then waves to the shocked auditorium.

They’re met with scattered cheers, probably from younger students oblivious to the politics of what they had just witnessed. The overall mood, however, seems far from celebratory. A schoolchild had just shattered enchantments woven by the most skilled wizard in generations, after all. _Tom_ wouldn’t be cheering if he were in their place.

The Minister just smiles.

Tom holds up a hand and the whispering halts.

 _Such power_. Just a year ago, he would have killed to command a crowd so easily. Now, he wonders if he deserves to. “In a few minutes, I will free my competitors and allow them to pursue victory through more conventional means,” he announces, voice dripping with contempt. Even without the aid of magic, his voice rings out across the stands. “For now, I ask for your attention.”

They sit, rapt. Dumbledore’s still smiling; Tom tries not to look at him.

“Our people stand on the brink of a war the likes of which none of us can yet conceptualize. The Muggles have weapons that burn cities and poison the land, guns that could kill us faster than we can cast. Even so, all their might is nothing against the horrors we could unleash on them with magic. We are _wizards_. We can turn their very flesh against them, set Fiendfyre upon them, raze every petty thing they love to the ground.”

The crowd murmurs, swaying, nodding. Approving.

“And then, after we win, what will be left to us? A world scarred by their machines? A sky choked by the ash of their deaths? Billions of enemies to keep perpetually subservient, forever-caged by the circumstances of their birth? Perhaps. We are on the defensive, after all. This is not a war we asked for. The Muggles will have brought this slaughter upon themselves.

“But hear me when I say this: our victory will not be glorious. Our victory will kill us as surely as a loss would. I know I look young, but I was born over six decades ago… I’ve seen war. I’ve seen how it rips a people apart and exposes the ugly white of their skeletons. If we are to win this war, it will mean drawing out the lifeblood of our children, sacrificing every scrap of comfort in our lives – and for what? Dominion over the faraway masses? A thousand cities rendered rubble? The desolation of everything beautiful our people might go on to build?

“No. This war will be our _ruin_ , win or lose.”

Dumbledore’s smile has faded. Behind him, the silence of the crowd grows thorny.

“I hear your concern. What choice do we have, but to fight for our way of life? Magical folk are not the aggressors in this conflict.” Tom takes a deep breath. “We _do_ have a choice, though. For centuries, we have existed on the thin line between our secret spaces and the Muggle world – the greater world. Now, we find ourselves at the natural conclusion of that balancing act: we must give ourselves fully to one world or the other.

“If we fight this war, we surrender ourselves to the world the Muggles have wrought, the world that we have so long watched from the fringes. But that world has never been our home.”

He’s losing them. Dumbledore places his hands flat on the judge’s table, as if preparing to rise.

“The home of wizardkind has always been the Forest,” Tom says, words racing out of him more quickly. “It will take us back, if we choose to return. It can protect us from the Muggles. We don’t have to break the Statute of Secrecy – we don’t have to desecrate the graves of our children –”

Dumbledore rises with the solemn grace of an ocean wave, cutting Tom off. “Thank you, Mister Riddle. I think that’s quite enough. Now, are you going to free your fellow contestants, or would you rather continue preaching a return to blood-worship?”

Tom says nothing. His cheeks feel simultaneously cold and flushed.

“As I suspected,” Dumbledore says, fond and horribly patronizing.

“He’s trying to recover from the fact that you just obliterated his best spellwork,” Harry murmurs into Tom’s ear. “Don’t let them forget it.”

 _Right_. Tom forces a wide smirk onto his numb face. “If you insist, _Minister_ ,” he says lazily, shooting wordless spells at Omar and Katarina. They both slump to the ground, awake but likely still reeling from his Stunners. “Now, I believe it’s procedure to give a triumphant champion a medical exam…?”

Neither he nor Harry needs any sort of medical attention that a nice nap wouldn’t fix – they’re each on the verge of magical exhaustion, of course, but the Healers can’t do anything about that. Instead, they deposit the two of them alone in a open-fronted tent to watch the remainder of the task.

As soon as they’re out of view of the audience, Tom crumples onto the provided cot, shaking with silent, senseless laughter. Harry collapses bodily on top of him, sharp chin digging into his chest.

“Good lord,” Tom sighs, pushing him off. “That was – I don’t know what that was. I think I might have doomed us.”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “Probably. But that was a good speech, Tom. Genuinely.”

“Great. You can print that on my gravestone. ‘ _Tom Riddle, 1926-1941 and 1995-1998. Good at speeches and getting smote by heads of state_.’”

Harry, who has always displayed something of a fondness for gallows humor, snickers. “S’not like you to joke about that sort of thing.”

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.”

“What, death?”

“Yeah.”

Harry grunts. “Makes sense, I suppose. I won’t let Dumbledore smite you, though, or whatever. I’d sooner kill him myself.”

“I know.” Tom pulls him closer, pulling fondly on the thick hair at the back of his head. “Hush, now. I think Omar’s going to do something exciting.”

***

Harry takes one look at the party starting up in the Slytherin common room and almost turns on his heel.

“Not in the mood?” Tom asks, looking amused.

“Magical fatigue is just starting to hit,” Harry says. “You aren’t looking very well yourself, honestly.”

Tom rubs at his shadowed eyes.

“Let’s just go hide in our room and cuddle,” Harry mutters, ducking under his arm.

“Oh.” Tom rubs Harry’s shoulders. “Well, when you put it like that, who am I to refuse?”

They head in, meeting the Slytherins with a weary pair of waves.

“Good show, Tom!” calls a sixth year. “Perfect score! Even old Maxime couldn’t find a good reason not to award you the highest marks.”

A wave of cheers and further congratulations follows. Everyone is careful to steer around the subject of Tom’s little speech and its repercussions. Those are discussions for later, in private.

The rest of the seventh years converge around Tom and Harry, cutting them off from the rest of the room.

“All right, Tom?” Calcifer asks, patting him on the back. “That went even more smoothly than we had hoped.”

“Quite all right,” Tom says. “Thanks, Cal. Harry and I were actually going to go rest for a moment, if you all can spare us –”

Daphne nods solemnly. “We’ll keep people occupied. You go take as much time as you need.”

“Thanks, Daph,” Harry says, genuinely touched.

It’s blissfully quiet in their room. Tom goes to stand at the narrow window set into the far wall, features painted in muted greens by lake-filtered light. Even out of the eyes of the world, his face is impassive.

Harry sits at the head of his bed, close enough that he could put his arms around Tom. “ _Are_ you okay?”

“I’m not more powerful than Dumbledore,” Tom says.

“I… I know. What –”

“This was a mistake,” says Tom. Harry looks up and sees that his hands are clasped tightly behind his back, like he’s trying to hide that old tremor in his fingers. “We miscalculated – he’ll see this as a challenge, and it – it was a _bluff_ , I can’t back it up! We should have waited at least until we graduated –”

“We don’t have the luxury of time. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? But, Tom… I mean, sure, _you’re_ not stronger than Dumbledore, but we still managed to brute-force our way through that enchantment! Together, we _are_ stronger than him. That counts for something.”

“I don’t want to die.”

Harry flops back onto the bed, sighing. “I know you don’t. I know. For now, though, can we just – just sit for a while? I’d like to hold you.”

“You’re hopeless,” Tom says, turning from the window with half a smile on his face.

“ _You’re_ beautiful.”

Tom laughs, and it doesn’t even sound broken.

***

A knock cuts through Harry’s sleepy haze. He blinks, confused – they had napped so long that twilight has fallen, and the lake outside the window now looks black. Tom curls around him, face buried in the side of his chest.

At first, Harry can’t remember what awoke him, but then the knock comes again. It sounds urgent.

“’Lo?” He pushes himself reluctantly up.

“Harry? Open the damn door,” comes Pansy’s voice in a hissing whisper.

Harry stumbles to the door and wrenches it open to a wave of sound from the ongoing party. Before him stands Pansy, wringing her hands. Tom grumbles a wordless complaint from the bed.

“ _Thank_ you.” Pansy pushes Harry aside and slams the door behind herself, breathing hard. “ _Lumos_. Tom, there are three Ministry officials here. They’re asking to see you.”

Tom rises unsteadily, blinking sleep out of his eyes and donning his usual sharpness like a cloak. “ _Here_? Are they in the common room yet?”

“Theo and Lyra are delaying them at the door.”

Harry scrabbles for his wand on the side table. “Did they say what they want?”

“Just to talk with you… I don’t trust it.”

“Fucking hell,” Tom mutters, reaching for his hairbrush. “How long do you think we have before they’re in here?”

“Five minutes max.”

“ _Fuck_.”

“I bet I can buy us some time if I go out there,” Harry offers.

“Absolutely not. I need you in here.”

Harry wheels around. “Right. Okay. _Okay_. What do we do if –”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Tom snaps. “I just – I need you with me.” He hits the side of his own leg with his hairbrush, so hard that Harry flinches.

“Of course,” Harry says soothingly. “Pans, can you –”

Another knock on the door, demanding and rough.

Harry hisses softly, feeling ice snap through his extremities.

Tom’s eyes look black as the lake. Harry can’t tell whether his expression is one of terror or anger.

There’s no time for planning or subtlety. Harry lunges for the side of his bed and pulls a long expanse of liquid fabric out from under his pillow.

The knock comes again. Harry throws the Invisibility Cloak over his head and retreats into the shadows of the room, where the glow of Pansy’s _Lumos_ doesn’t reach. Tom’s eyes stay frozen onto the place where he had been, and for a moment he looks utterly lost. Then he visibly shakes off his shock and fear, restraining his worry to a jumping muscle in his jaw.

“Where did he go?” whispers Pansy, staring.

“As far as you know, he’s out at the party,” Tom says softly, then, louder, “You can come in now.”

Pansy steps to the side just in time for the dorm door to fly open and reveal three adults. First comes a broad-shouldered man in blue – an Auror, Harry realizes. He’s followed by a shrouded Unspeakable and a woman in black, her hair a bright splash of orange even in the dim room.

“Mrs. Potter,” Tom says, smiling politely. “It’s been too long.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Lily doesn’t _look_ hostile, but it’s hard to tell with her.

The Auror strides forward, eyes sweeping around the room, and casts a spell that banishes the growing dark and renders the dorm in its usual rich mahoganies and pale greens.

“Is something wrong?” Tom asks.

“Not at all,” Lily says. The Unspeakable stands at her shoulder, silent as the grave, the shadows under their hood untouched by the Auror’s spell. “The Minister and the Department of Mysteries have been collaborating on a new project that we thought you might be able to help with. Think of it as a… a business opportunity.”

The Auror laughs humorlessly, head still moving on a swivel. “Lily, just because the kid’s a Slytherin doesn’t mean he’s purely profit-motivated.”

Harry shrinks in on himself, irrationally terrified that the man might see him through the Cloak. He hates this. Hates that Lily’s here, hates Tom’s fear, hates that Pansy is caught up in it all…

“Of course. It would be my pleasure to help the Minister with any of his projects,” Tom says. “If I might ask, what brought this on? I’m really quite tired at the moment, and I would benefit from a bit of a rest. Perhaps in a week or so, after I’ve fully recovered, I could lend my assistance…?”

The Unspeakable sways like a birch in a storm, whispering in Lily’s ear.

“I fear this matter is somewhat time-sensitive,” she says after a moment of listening. “We need you tonight.”

Tom freezes. His hands, holding one another behind his back, shine white as bone with the intensity of his grip. “Of course,” he says again, mechanical. “Of course. Will you give me a moment to pack? I can meet you out in the hallway.”

Lily looks beyond him, her gaze lingering on the quilt atop Harry’s unmade bed and the Quidditch gloves hanging on the headboard. “You share this room with Harry?”

Tom’s nostrils flare slightly. “Yes. Do you want me to fetch him, too –?”

“That’s quite all right,” the Auror says brusquely, clapping his hands. “We’ll give you a few minutes to collect your things. You shouldn’t need much more than a change of clothes – we can provide everything else.”

“Yes, sir,” Tom says woodenly.

As soon as the adults leave, Pansy turns and throws her arms around Tom’s shoulders. His hands fly up like startled birds, then settle awkwardly on her back. “You should probably go,” he says.

“Yeah.” She steps away. “What are you going to do?”

Tom’s lips thin. “I don’t think I have much of a choice, do I?”

“Are –” she lowers her voice. “Are they going to kill you, Tom?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“What? But you just said –”

“I know what I said,” Tom murmurs, looking in Harry’s direction. “You should go. We don’t have much time.”

Pansy flees.

Harry tugs off the Cloak, though he feels naked without it. “What do they want?” It’s a struggle not to let his voice grow shrill. “ _Tom_. What do we –”

Tom says nothing. He’s staring, Harry realizes, through the window and into the void beyond. “Start packing. We’re going to need food, clothes, bedding probably… we can transfigure what we need, but the food’s the most important thing.”

“I – I mostly just have sweets in the room, but –”

“That’s fine. Do you know how to waterproof bags?”

“I – would _Impervius_ work for that?”

“It would.” Tom turns and starts tearing through his perfectly organized trunk, pulling out his cauldron, vials of liquid – anything heavy, Harry realizes. “Perform it on our trunks. I, ah… can you do the Bubble-Head Charm?”

Harry sucks in a sharp breath. “I’ve never tried it before, but I know the theory and I’ve seen it done a few times…”

“That’ll have to be good enough.” Tom throws shut the locks on his trunk and kicks it toward the window. “Are you packed?”

Harry snorts, grabbing his own trunk. “I never _un_ packed.”

“Good. Come here.”

They stand in front of their little window to the lake, holding hands, suitcases gripped tightly, Harry trying desperately to remember the incantation for the Bubble-Head Charm.

“It’s going to be awfully cold, isn’t it,” Tom says forlornly.

“I think that’s the least of our problems right now.”

Tom laughs shortly. “Still…”

The door slams back open without so much as a knock. “Right, Riddle, are you ready – _ah_ ,” booms the Auror.

“Harry?” asks Lily, eyes a familiar green, cheeks thick with freckles, willowy and pale.

The Unspeakable just stands at her side, cloaked in horrible silence.

The Auror steps around them both. He levels his wand in their direction so quickly that Harry doesn’t have time to so much as _blink_ , let alone dodge out of the way of his spell.

Harry pulls up his wand, but he knows he’s too slow to get up a shield – he closes his eyes, bracing himself for the nausea of a Stunner to the chest –

The blow never hits. Harry opens his eyes to see the jinx suspended in the air in the middle of the room, caught in a barrier that separates he and Tom from the adults like the bars of a cage. The Auror tries half a dozen more spells, but none can penetrate the strange construct.

Harry retreats until his back meets the cold glass of the window, managing to erect a redundant shield. The cage moves with him, extending in a sphere for over a meter around him. It seems to be centered around his chest, where the disguise pendant hangs.

Tom reaches out as if to touch it, a pensive frown on his face.

“Tom, we need to go,” Harry interjects, grabbing him by the wrist and shoving aside his own shock. “Shatter the window. Now.”

“Ready?”

“Do it!” Already, the cobwebbed prison bars look weaker.

Harry never hears the sound of the glass breaking. He doesn’t have the time to process anything at all, in fact, before freezing water consumes him, slamming into and through him, pushing him toward the other side of the room – toward the enemy.

His hold on Tom’s arm is what ends up saving him. That tiny spot of warmth grounds him and orients him just enough that he’s able to aim his wand and jet them forcefully against the current and through the broken window, into the icy darkness of the Black Lake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the endgame, now.
> 
> [casparelli](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/)'s beautiful comic series based on a scene from this fic is now completed, and it is my favorite thing in the world! The first installment is [here](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/post/633894778221854720/part-1-part-2-part-3-part4-is-coming-soon), and the two last parts are [here](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/post/641781634725740544/part-1-part-2-part-3-part-4-end-part5) and [here](https://casparelli.tumblr.com/post/637620211703545856/well-here-it-is-folks-the-second-last-part-of-the). Go check it out and lavish it with the praise it deserves!
> 
> <3


	33. The Chase

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom flee Hogwarts.

**Part V: Heaven and Earth Did Quake**

Tom doesn’t know how to swim. He doesn’t know how to _fucking swim_ , and it doesn’t even matter because he’s at the bottom of the damn lake. He could be an Olympian athlete, and he’d still _die_. Between the oxygen deprivation, the cold, and the pressure, there’s no way he’s getting back up to the surface before this stupid, flimsy body gives out.

He can't hear anything but his pulse, claustrophobic against the his throbbing skull. It keeps missing beats, scrambled by terror and persistent weakness alike. He tries to calm it, but without breath to steady him, it’s a useless effort.

All is darkness and murk. The pressure bears down on him like a knife to the forehead, undeterred by his hands held tightly over his ears. He thinks he might be crying, but he’s too numb and waterlogged to be certain.

He can feel a spark of warmth within his chest, a lone match struck against the eternity of blank, frigid water. It flares with his notice, dancing in rhythm with his spasming heart, as simultaneously alien and familiar as the flames in the Goblet of Fire –

Suddenly he can breathe again, and the horrible pressure recedes. The pain remains, though, spiking and awful, and it takes Tom far too long to realize that he’s screaming.

The sound of his own misery fades into jagged sobs, and his hiccupping heartbeat begins to stabilize. He breathes deeply, tasting filtered, salty air, and opens his eyes through the pain.

Bubble-Head Charm. _Right_. Through the mild distortion of the bubble he can see a head-poundingly bright light – Harry’s _Lumos_. Harry himself treads water, his terrified face ensconced in a bubble of its own.

“Are you all right?” Tom asks. His voice echoes strangely against the edges of the bubble, sounding high and twisted. He pulls his knees up to his chest, shivering. He can’t remember ever feeling this cold…

Harry shakes his head, mouth forming words Tom can’t perceive. Of course – the Bubble-Head Charm doesn’t allow for communication. In fact, that’s one of its major drawbacks. He’d read an essay on the subject just two months ago, written by a researcher trying to obtain grant money to develop a version of the spell that would enable speech through water…

Fingernails dig into his cheeks with a vengeance, and Tom realizes his hands are still gripping the sides of his face.

 _Focus_ , he tells himself desperately, hating his disjointed thoughts. He unclenches his jaw and relaxes his fingers. Then, carefully so as not to pop the bubble, he begins the process of getting his hands down by his sides. He’ll need his hands free to cast magic if just _half_ the rumors about the Black Lake are true.

All his care is for naught. As soon as the hem of his pajama sleeve breaches the edge of the bubble, water floods into his tiny pocket of oxygen and he is once more lost to the abyss.

 _Perhaps_ , he thinks, gasping in a mouthful of brine, _Dennis Bishop will see his last wish fulfilled. Perhaps I was always meant to drown_.

***

Tom comes back to himself on the far shore of the Black Lake, dragging Harry into the frigid air as the stones of the bank dig into his feet and knees.

Harry gasps as his head breaks the surface. He’s clinging tight enough to bruise. “What _was_ that?”

Tom tries to tell him that he can’t remember, but his mouth isn’t working right.

He collapses back into the lake, gulping in hungry lungfuls of water – ah. Self-transfiguration. Gills. Of course. He reaches up to the side of his neck and finds it laced with fluttering, delicate folds. After a moment of concentration, they fade.

He pulls himself back up, wincing as the winter wind cuts through his sodden pajamas. “Harry,” he rasps. “Are you okay? What happened?”

Harry stumbles out of the water, collapsing on the shore like a broken umbrella dropped from a storm’s belly. He’s helped along by what looks like a horse made of metal, taller and broader than a unicorn but with the same pointed shape to its skull. “I’m fine,” he says, patting the horse feebly on the snout. “Thanks to you.”

“I…” Tom sways, and the creature – a kelpie, he realizes belatedly, recognizing the sheen to its skin as scales – bounds to his side for him to lean against. It’s slippery and fish-belly cold, but solid. “Harry, I don’t remember what happened after my bubble failed.”

Harry purses his lips, watching inscrutably as Tom stumbles his way out of the water. “That’s… that’s not a good sign, Tom.”

“We need to keep moving,” Tom says, glancing behind them at the softly glowing lights of Hogwarts. “They’ll be coming after us soon.”

As he steps fully onto the bank, the kelpie splashes away, becoming liquid.

Tom reels away, shocked. “I didn’t – I didn’t know kelpies could do that.” His teeth begin chattering uncontrollably.

Harry steadies him, eyes sad. “They can’t. It wasn’t a real kelpie, though, just a conjuration.”

“I… I see. My work, I assume?”

“Yeah.” Harry whispers a spell, and Tom feels like he’s been plunged into a sauna.

The contrast is almost too much, for a moment, and his bones still feel like blocks of ice against the new warmth in his blood. “ _Ow_ ,” he manages weakly.

Harry stands on his tiptoes to kiss Tom on the forehead, which honestly quite helps. “I’m sorry… You were right, though. We need to go.”

Disoriented as he is, Tom has been on the verge of turning into the unicorn for a long while. He gives himself to the transformation now; a run will do him good.

Harry vaults wordlessly onto his back, and the unicorn races away into the dark of the trees beyond. Distantly, it dawns on Tom that they’ve lost their suitcases in the escape, and that he can’t remember the last time he had his wand in hand. The unicorn ignores these thoughts.

He was made to run, and run he shall.

The Forest knows them. He telegraphs his terror to it in hoofbeats, and it listens, folding its song around his equine bones. The shades of the ancients dance at the corners of his vision.

Harry holds tightly around his neck, face buried in his mane. He still shivers, though his skin is warm with conjured sunlight, and Tom takes comfort in the sensation of breath against skin.

A flash behind them pierces the darkness of the thick trees and lights off the frost blooming on the ground – they’ve been spotted.

The unicorn speeds up, letting the concerns of its human aspect fade away into the thrill of the chase. At some point Harry lets go of its neck to fire a stream of magic over his shoulder, then curses softly and presses himself low once more.

The hot whisper of a tracking spell nips at Tom’s heels, dogging them still deeper into the woods. Desperate, he finds another pool of strength within himself and runs still faster.

Perhaps he should stop. They could make their final stand here – force the Ministry to call in Dumbledore or risk massive casualties, then take the old man out and release the Mantles.

No use. The second task had thoroughly fatigued his magic, and whatever he had done in the lake hadn’t exactly helped matters. He doubts Harry is much better off.

 _We need help_ , he thinks into the night. _If there’s anything remaining of the Mother out there, anything left of the oaks – we need you_.

A shout rings out, deadened by foliage but coming distinctly from the sky above. The enemy must be on brooms. There will be no outrunning that.

Tom vaults over a fallen tree, body tense in flight. His breath streams out behind him, thick in the winter night, coming harshly from his fatigued lungs. They’re going to have to make a final stand here. The sooner he halts, the less exhausted he’ll be for the fight –

Through the scream of the wind in his ears, Tom thinks he can hear a new sound: something low and resonant. Something that reminds him of sunny afternoons hiding in the corner of the orphanage, a garter snake in hand, mud caked on his knees, indulging in a facsimile of friendship.

Words on the breeze, sprung of his desperation: “ _You are in need, not-Master? I am here_.”

No, not a hallucination at all. _Parseltongue_.

Tom changes direction, ignoring Harry’s surprised yelp, and charges after the hiss.

“ _Duck_ ,” hisses the great snake in the darkness. “ _And do not look upon me_.”

Harry, apparently catching on, clings tighter still to Tom’s shoulders.

A tree groans just to their left, as if under some massive weight. They gallop into a clearing lit by diluted moonlight, and in that silver gleam Tom sees the basilisk in all its spine-crushing savagery. Massive scales twine about an enormous, leaning hemlock, the bark of the tree warping as the beast strains upward.

Tom slams his eyes shut and pulls his human skin on like a cloak, tumbling onto the forest floor with Harry in tow.

They lay tangled in each other for an eternal moment, listening to the screams of their pursuers and the wordless victory cries of the basilisk. Tom grins blindly into the soil. The basilisk is all _rend-shred-tear_ brutality, muscle and tooth and eyes of a color Tom will never witness. A drop of blood lands on his face, so warm that it steams in the cold, and it’s beautiful in a way no poetry can describe: this beast, killing on his command. The safety of butchery.

Tom feels untouchable and terrified in equal measure. He can’t imagine what Harry must think of him, shaking with silent, awful laughter, biting down on his own numb arm to try and contain his hysterics.

Then all is silent, save the shiver of the earth as the basilisk drops back onto the ground. “ _They are dead, little ones. If more come, they will die in turn_.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” Harry hisses politely. “ _That was very impressive_.”

Cautious, Tom looks up to see the silhouette of the great snake black against the stars. Its eyes have closed. “ _I am of the Forest, now. We protect our own_.”

“ _Well done_ ,” Tom hisses to it, collecting himself. “Harry, we should keep moving.”

Harry hesitates, spine stiffening under the moonlight. “I – do you hear that?”

Tom stills, feeling his pulse quicken again. Harry’s right: he can hear hoofbeats pounding through the night, coming ever closer. _The unicorns_ , he thinks, heart leaping into his throat.

Antlers wrought in gold catch the light. The hoofbeats slow as they carry a pair of beasts into the narrow clearing. The hinds, who had escaped from their handlers, creatures said to be fleet as falcons on the wing. Not the unicorns, but close enough; on their backs, he and Harry will be able to leave Hogwarts far behind in a matter of hours. They could cross the mountains, make their way to the sea…

Tom sets off towards the hinds, hand up in greeting, pulling Harry along behind him.

“Wait – _Tom_. We can’t go yet.”

“What are you talking about?”

Even in the half-light, he can see the stubborn set to Harry’s jaw. “We have a responsibility. Alone, we won’t be able to do anything against the Ministry, but –”

Tom breathes out slowly, resigned. “You want to bring the rest of the dorm with us.”

“Not just them. Everyone in the dueling club – Henry’s friends, Ginny’s group… anyone who wants an alternative to this war.”

“A wizarding militia, operating outside of the Ministry’s power?”

“I mean – yeah, I suppose that is what I want.” Harry’s shadow sways anxiously. “Does – does that make us as bad as them? Who are _we_ to recruit a child army?”

“We’re justified in ways they aren’t,” Tom says with a confidence he doesn’t feel. “We would fight for peace, not domination.”

Harry scoffs. “I’m sure most of the Ministry would claim the opposite, if they knew of our plans.”

“I – does it even matter? They were going to kill me. That’s what tonight was: they _sent Lily into our dorm_ to guilt me into surrendering! They wanted to drag me off for a quiet execution! Now you’re agonizing over the morality of raising an army against them?”

“It’s not about what we do to _them_ , it’s about what we do to our classmates!”

“So, give the others a _choice_. You were right before: they deserve to have a say in the future. We can give them that power. Conjure your Patronus. We’ll give it a message to carry to each of the common rooms. Anyone willing to follow us will come.”

Harry wavers a moment longer, then falls upon Tom in a tight hug.

“We’re not helpless,” Tom murmurs, running his fingers through the curls on the back of Harry’s head. “As long as we’re alive, as long as we have our magic, we can _fight_. You've shown me that. They can kill the oaks, they can shatter our family, they can send their agents into our personal spaces, but as long as we have each other…”

“You’re trembling,” Harry murmurs into his chest. “Oh, Tom…”

Tom pushes him away, feeling absurd. “I’m scared, okay? I’ll – I’ll get used to it. Just summon your Patronus.”

The soft glow of the unicorn Patronus calms Tom’s fears better even than Harry’s hug had. It shakes out its mane and noses gently at Harry, painting his face in silver.

Tom lets out a long, shaky breath and addresses the insubstantial beast. “I need you to go to Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and Hufflepuff. Give them a message.” He clears his throat, imagining the swollen audience of the second task arrayed before him, eyes hungry. “‘In a desperate bid to preserve their war effort, the Ministry attempted to kill me late this evening. I have fled with Harry Potter into the Dark Forest. If you wish to join us, come into the woods between now and dawn. We will extend you both our protection and our tutelage. I stand by what I said this morning: we can still follow a path to peace.’”

The unicorn stamps and shimmers, then turns and hurls itself into the night towards Hogwarts.

“I suppose this means we’ll have to go back,” Tom murmurs. He puts his arms around himself. The wool of his pajamas feels stiff and strange, and it still smells of lake-salt rot.

“Just to the edge of the Forest.” Harry reaches down and unties a length of fabric from around his waist. “We’ll go under the Invisibility Cloak, and have the hinds come with us – assuming they’re okay with that?”

The enormous deer stand patiently, blinking back at Tom. “Yes, I think they’ll be willing.”

Harry nods sharply and throws the Cloak over both of their heads in a practiced gesture.

“I’ve lost my wand,” Tom confesses as they set off back to the castle.

“You can borrow mine.”

“Did you manage to salvage anything from our trunks?”

“Just my wand and the Cloak.”

Tom nearly trips over a root in the darkness and throws an arm around Harry’s shoulders to steady himself. His knees feel suddenly weak; the adrenaline that had brought him this far is beginning to fade, and with it his courage.

“We just need to make it to dawn,” Harry says softly, misinterpreting Tom’s silence. “Then we can rest. That nap wasn’t quite enough, was it?”

Tom hums in empty acknowledgement, thoughts unspooling from his mind and trailing like spidersilk in their wake as they pick their way through the trees. They’re moving impossibly fast considering the number of footstep’s they’ve taken. _Possible consequence of traveling with the hinds_ , the jabbering scholar inside Tom declares. _Alternative hypothesis: you’re losing time again, just like you did under the lake_. He shoves the notion aside, aching.

Too soon, the lights of Hogwarts stare down at them in candle-colored judgment, peering through the branches of the pines overhead. Never has the sight of Tom’s home seemed so much like a threat.

Only now, after clawing their way from the lake, after that desperate chase through the woods and the basilisk’s bloody rain of retribution, does it all seem real. They're _fugitives_. They have exiled themselves from the serene detachment they had enjoyed when they could still playact as schoolchildren, when they could pretend the war couldn’t touch them.

“Do you think they’ll come?” Harry asks idly.

Tom opens his mouth to answer, but his numb lips spit out, “I’m going to have to kill Dumbledore.”

“It’s the only way,” Harry agrees, impassive. Tom looks to him and finds his face as empty of emotion as his voice. He looks like his mother, all frozen fire and glassy danger.

“I don’t know if I want to carry the Mantle.” Tom whispers it onto the breeze, half-hoping Harry won’t hear.

He hears. Of _course_ he does. “Why not?” Still, his voice sounds dead as stone. The boy Tom loves is a world away, still locked away behind the jaws of the great snake, unmoored in the aftermath of his usual vicious combat-joy.

“I don’t trust my mind. I… my mother’s family line…”

Harry wets his lips, eyes unwavering from the castle.

“The British pureblood families are too insular,” Tom says. “They have bred weakness into their bloodlines as deeply as they have Darkness.”

“Like how Lyra thinks Calcifer is going to lose his mind before he reaches his mid-twenties?”

“Both of his parents went crooked. They call it the ‘blood madness’ – I don’t know if that’s the proper term, though. It’s an – an instability. Like their magic turns on the mind and erodes at the personality, making them angry, or forgetful, or just… not themselves.”

“You think that’s happening to you.”

Tom shrugs, but in the dark Harry wouldn’t be able to see the motion even if he looked away from the still gates of Hogwarts. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? My mother’s family was known for their inbreeding, I just lost whole _minutes_ of memory under the lake, and we both know I could become – well. You know.”

Harry puffs out a breath. “I can’t say I haven’t considered it.” At last, he glances over, false eyes glittering like moonstones. “Doesn’t matter, though. We have our duty, and we’ll deal with what comes. I… Tom, I’m too far gone, now. Even if you became a monster like the one I used to know, I couldn’t bring myself to leave your side.”

 _Too far gone_. As if this thing they’ve built between them is an anchor tied to Harry’s ankles, pulling him back into the briny depths of the lake.

Harry reaches for his hand in the night and squeezes. “I don’t think that will happen, though.”

Tom almost laughs at his optimism. “Be that as it may, I… I believe it would be a grievous mistake for me to accept the Mantle.”

No answer. Harry just stares up at him through that lying mask of a soft face. Tom reaches over to lift off the glamour pendant and tucks it deep in the pocket of his pajama pants.

“I’m done with the Ministry’s illusions,” he says by way of explanation.

Harry’s real eyes snap unreadably. “The amulet,” he says slowly, evidently putting the conversation to the side. “It’s a Dark artifact, isn’t it?”

“The magic on it morphed into some sort of advanced shield.” Tom touches the stone of the necklace in his pocket, still warm from Harry’s skin. “I suppose we finally managed to make one, though it’s not what I expected.” He doesn’t comment on the nature of the artifact. The pendant had created a cage that doubled as a shield: that says a lot about Harry’s relationship with the pendant and the glamour it holds.

A shadow streaks toward them, momentarily blotting out the light of the castle, and alights on Harry’s arm with the barest noise. Death Star, her eyes huge, crooning softly into Harry’s ear.

More shapes move in the blackness in front of them, creeping across the expanse of the grounds – humans bearing packs. Their friends are coming.

***

A crack of gold opens between the horizon and a bank of dense gray clouds. Through it breaks a shaft of thick light, hitting the crowns of the trees and painting them in regal yellow and shade.

Frost crunches under their feet as they delve deeper into the mountains, trailed by the nearly two dozen students who chose to follow them. The others stick close together, wands sparking with anxiety, arms around each other. They’re not yet used to the silent danger of the Forest in winter, trees laden with snow and paths echoing with the memory of cruel winds.

Even Luna and little Dahlia, familiar as they are with the nature of the woods, seem frightened. Perhaps their true terror is rooted not in their surroundings, but in what they had left behind… and Harry, sat atop one of the hinds with his head pillowed on Tom’s back, the Invisibility Cloak hiding his true face from the others, cannot begrudge them that.

He’s surprised by his own calm. In truth, though, Harry has been bracing himself for something like this for over a year. The moment he cast the spell that ripped apart Alice Longbottom’s very self – the moment he saw the ugly guts of this other world – he had resigned himself to a lifetime of running.

He’s not even _surprised_ at how soon everything had shattered, and how horribly. The numbness that has gripped him since the events in Hogsmeade still cocoons his mind, unyielding even at the sight of Lily with the enemy.

After the nightmare that has been the past twenty-four hours, surely his most pressing emotion shouldn’t be this gentle drowsiness.

It doesn’t matter. His role now is to watch over the others as they make their way over the mountains and into the wildest parts of the Forest.

Hours pass. The sun wheels overhead and loses itself in the heavy, low clouds that drape the sky in gravedirt-gray.

Tom falls asleep in the early morning, after the initial brightness of the dawn subsides. Harry chats softly with Peryle to keep himself awake; at least one of them ought to stay alert in case the Ministry manages to pierce the basilisk’s guard.

He’s not sure when the vertigo hits.

Sometime after Peryle leaving his side to scout ahead for signs of her herd’s passage, but before the sun reaches its apex, the joint pain building in his wrists and spine grows to an intolerable crescendo. Harry takes his hands off Tom’s waist to massage the bones on the backs of his hands, grimacing. In the next moment, his sense of balance leaves him and he tilts off the back of the hind.

“Ow,” he thinks he says, but it’s difficult to tell through the ringing in his ears. He’s landed badly, directly on his back, and by all rights he should be in pain.

There are people shouting in alarm – have they been attacked? Silly Harry, lying here amid frosted banks of moss. He flails for the cold earth and _heaves_ , but before he can sit up, his vision chars at the corners.

Harry blinks into darkness for what feels like no longer than a heartbeat and finds himself staring into a sky gone dark, framed by spiky evergreen boughs. He aches and itches through every vein in his body.

“Good to see you awake,” says a clipped, unsympathetic voice. A wave of powerful nostalgia rips through Harry, and he can almost pretend he’s in another place entirely, curled up in front of the fire in Gryffindor Tower. He can almost convince himself he’s _home_.

“’Lo, Hermione,” he rasps, smiling through the pain in his temples. “What happened?”

“You fainted,” she says crisply. “Tom tried to help, but he was in nearly as bad a state.”

Harry sits up, eyes screwed shut against the resulting dizziness. “Is – is he okay? What –?”

“You had air bubbles in your blood. The Muggles call it ‘the bends’; it happens when the human body is exposed to extreme pressure, then brought too quickly to a low-pressure environment. Pansy tells me you and Tom decided to take a little swim in the Black Lake.”

“Where _is_ Tom?” Harry looks around and finds the two of them alone in the frozen depths of the woods. Even with the sun high in the sky, the trees around them stand dim and snow-slicked. He hugs the Cloak around his shoulders, shivering.

“He healed himself and stayed with the others,” Hermione says. “I asked to wait with you while you recovered from the transfusions.” In the light of the bluebell flame in her hands, her eyes look like bits of ice chipped off the night sky.

Harry hums, wavering. This world’s Hermione is still unfamiliar to him. Since Henry’s death, she’s seemed untouchably cold. “Why are you here? I know you don’t trust the two of us. Why would you put yourself in danger like this?” Of all the students who had chosen to venture into the woods with them, Hermione is the only one who never attended the dueling club.

Hermione purses her lips. “You can’t imagine I’m in favor of this war. I _know_ the Muggle world. I grew up there. And it has its ugly parts, sure… but it doesn’t deserve to be destroyed. They’re just _people_ , Harry.” She laughs humorlessly. “And Draco wasn’t about to ignore Tom’s message. The two of us have had quarrels, lately, but he’s still my best friend. I couldn’t let him go alone into danger.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Harry says, trying to channel Tom. Hermione’s loyalty is a _useful investment_ , as he would put it.

She shifts subtly away from him. “Why are you wearing Henry’s face?”

Harry flinches, reaching up for a glamor pendant that’s no longer there. “The un-speak seal – well, I can’t tell you the specifics. But this is my… this is what I’ve always looked like.” He can’t bear to keep meeting her eyes. It hurts too much to know that she’s seeing a dead boy looking back at her.

“You’re from the future, then,” Hermione tries. “A Potter relative?”

He shakes his head mutely.

“But you _did_ have an accident with time. If you’re not from the past, and you’re not from the future… did Henry – what, create you somehow? Did the Room of Requirement clone him? No, that doesn’t make any sense. And the Ministry would have sworn him to secrecy, too… and what about Tom? _He’s_ almost certainly a time traveler…”

“Henry didn’t know,” Harry says quietly. “Geoff and Dahl do, but they haven’t questioned the, uh, the mechanics of how I came here.”

Hermione sucks in a sharp breath. “ _Oh_. You’re from a – a different timeline? I didn’t know that was even possible! I mean, I’ve seen it postulated in both Muggle and magical texts, but as far as I could tell there were no verified instances of sustained travel between timelines. The Unspeakables must have been _thrilled_ to get their hands on you…”

Harry says nothing, but he can feel his face turning harder with every word. He misses his Hermione _so_ _much_. The girl he had once called his best friend wouldn’t say things like this – she’d known him better than he knew himself, or so he had sometimes thought. He wonders what she would think of him now, hands heavy with rust and lightning.

“– the implications for the more experimental branches of magic would be huge! I mean, imagine if there was a way to control that sort of interdimensional travel. Why, we could establish trade networks with other timelines, conduct surveillance on alternate versions of people… if we found a timeline with a version of earth without humans, we could even move there! That would handily solve the whole Muggle situation…” Hermione blinks rapidly, at last seeming to wake up to Harry’s irritation. “Of course, that’s all built on the assumption that you, ah. That you in fact _were_ born in an alternate timeline. Were you…?”

He taps the nape of his neck meaningfully and gets wincingly to his feet, ready to be done with the stunted conversation. There is no version of Hermione that he can’t find it within himself to love, but just as she can’t look at him without seeing Henry, he sees the ghost of an old friend within her. It’s agonizing.

“You’ll probably have balance issues for at least another hour.” She shoots to her feet and steadies him as he sways.

Harry bites down hard on his lower lip as absurd tears bead in his eyes. She uses the same goddamn shampoo as his Hermione did. His mind wavers between realities, scrambling to reconcile this frost-edged forest with a scent that had once meant weekends curled up in his favorite squashy armchair in Gryffindor Tower, early morning library runs, three pairs of feet shuffling along under cover of the Invisibility Cloak… _fuck_.

“When you fainted, and the Cloak fell off of you, there was a moment when we all thought you were Henry, returned from the grave,” Hermione says, watching sharply as Harry takes a few experimental steps. “Geoffrey said something about a glamour – Tom wasn’t in the mood to do anything but get you back on your feet. And to keep himself from keeling over, too, I suppose…”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Harry says stiffly. His legs ache, and he hardly relishes the thought of catching up to the others.

She sighs in hot frustration. “I didn’t mean it like that. I – I just – it’s like I have another chance to be his friend, now. I don’t want to waste that.”

“That’s not how friendship works,” Harry says, turning his face away so she can’t see the tear running down his left cheek. “I’m _not him_. I never will be.”

“I don’t… I’m _trying_ to say I care about you.” Her voice wavers dangerously. He looks down and sees her crying, too, wiping tears away as if offended by their daring. “Oh, that came out all wrong, didn’t it?”

“Yeah… yeah, it kind of did.”

She frowns, reaching up as if to touch the wet tracks on his face. “Why are _you_ …?”

“Let’s just say that… that I know how it feels to look at a familiar face and know all the wrong memories live behind it,” Harry says. He’s gotten good at navigating around the un-speak seal, recently. He’s not sure how to feel about that fact. It feels like deception, for all that it accomplishes the opposite.

“ _Oh_ ,” she says. “So –?”

“I miss her desperately,” Harry says. “But I – yeah. I think we could be good friends, the two of us. Now, I suppose we should get moving…?”

Hermione claps her hands. “Right! Wait just a moment.” She brings her fingers to her mouth and lets out a whistle so high and strong that it shakes snow from the trees. Had _his_ Hermione known how to whistle like that? If so, he’d never heard it from her.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps it’s time to stop wondering about the girl he’d left behind, and start learning about the woman at his side

In the ringing silence after the whistle, hoofbeats sound through the woods. One of the hinds, graceful and white-gold, canters out from between two pine trees and prances before them, head held proudly.

Harry slumps in relief. Hermione giggles and punches him lightly in the shoulder. “What, did you think you were going to have to walk until we wandered into the others?”

“Did _not_ ,” Harry shoots back with overblown petulance, dumping more of his weight onto her shoulder.

She shoves him off, snickering, and – and it’s weird, it’s subtly _wrong_ , but simultaneously freeing. He’s spent three years lonely for her; it's funny how quickly that kind of sorrow can begin to feel commonplace.

***

By the time the sun descends over the high teeth of the mountains, they’ve made their way across the foothills and into a part of the Forest so deep and wild that even Harry feels out of place. An unfamiliar breed of dry red ferns snarls their path, bright as cardinals against the frost-gray ground. Birdcalls sound shrill and desperate, and the growing dark of the clouds above whispers a crackling threat.

Tom and Peryle call a halt when they reach the base of a brambled hill. “We’ll stay here from now until dawn,” Tom says. Lit by the pale glow of Draco’s _Lumos_ , his face looks ghostly and paranoid. Harry wants badly to hold him. “Cast every defensive spell you know around the perimeter.”

Michael raises a lazy hand. “Can we make a campfire?”

Tom pinches the bridge of his nose, mouth moving in what Harry can only imagine is an unvoiced insult.

“It’ll be good for morale,” Theo adds, bouncing anxiously on the balls of his feet. Harry catches nods from some of the others – Blaise, Ginny, Pansy.

“Not until the area has been secured,” Peryle says. “But after that, why not?”

Standing on the other side of the group from him, Harry can’t hear Tom’s sigh of irritation, but he can see it written plainly in the angle of his shoulders. He makes his way over, exchanging a smile with Daphne and a nod with Fey Crouch, who had tagged along with Draco and Hermione.

“Hey, you,” he says softly, burying his face in Tom’s chest.

Tom laughs insubstantially. “Hey. Can I borrow your wand for a couple wards?”

Harry hands it over unquestioningly and sinks to the forest floor to lean against Tom’s legs as he casts.

Once he finishes, Tom crumples down next to him and lays his head in Harry’s lap.

“Long day?”

Tom grunts, jabbing him in the stomach with the butt of his own wand.

“Hmm. Grumpy.” Harry watches drowsily as Michael leads a handful of the other Slytherins in constructing a fire pit. “What did you tell them about – ah, about my face? No one’s said anything about it but Hermione.”

“Enough.”

“Well, thank you.” Harry scratches gently at Tom’s scalp. “Y’know, Hermione said the bends can, uh, how did she put it… can cause minor memory problems, I guess. So I don’t think we should be worried about you losing your mind based on that whole mess.”

A gout of flame screams up from the pit, painting the surrounding tree trunks in hungry orange. Someone yells in triumph and casts a new spell that turns the newborn fire a bright, searing purple.

“Tom?”

“I don’t want to think about it right now.”

“Reasonable enough. D’you want me to shut up and let you rest?”

Tom squints up at Harry. His hair’s getting long again, and a hunk of it covers one of his eyes. “You can do whatever you want. Just don’t expect me to make a coherent response.”

Harry brushes the hair off his forehead, trying not to grin like a fool.

“You’re such a sap,” Tom grumbles, mouth accordioning in an aborted smile. He presses the wand into Harry’s hand and rolls over to hug around his waist. “Make me some blankets, now.”

It’s all Harry can do not to lean over and press a kiss to his forehead, push a bit of warmth into him through simple touch. But he feels the same bone-deep exhaustion settling into himself. He’s so ready for rest.

Though it takes him a few tries, he eventually manages to transfigure a passable wool blanket out of a fallen leaf. It’s lumpy, and closer in proportion to a scarf than a proper quilt, but it’s warm enough. He settles it carefully around Tom, trying not to think too regretfully of the quilts James and Lily had gifted them for their first holiday in this time.

As Tom’s breathing smooths out into the gentle rhythm of true sleep, Harry leans back against the sturdy bark of a nearby birch tree to watch over the others. He finds peace in the space between waking and dreams, sensations passing freely between reality and fancy.

The colors of the fire shift, pulsing between poppyflower vibrancy and a fading pastel blue, spurting with occasional tongues of crimson that fill his guts with stale homesickness. Lyra brings him handfuls of roasted hazelnuts smuggled out of the kitchens. At intervals, the restless clouds parts to reveal shy flashes of the night sky. He thinks he sees clusters of stars nesting in the trees over their heads, watching over them, but perhaps that’s just part of the dream.

Harry can’t be sure when he falls fully asleep. In any case, when he wakes up it’s with Tom in his arms, frostmelt in his eyelashes, and the heady taste of freedom quickening his pulse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aha! We've passed 200k! I think that means this fic officially qualifies as a "bigboi" (that's the technical term, I assure you).


	34. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry, Tom, and their friends venture over the mountains.

Just past noon on their first day away from Hogwarts, Peryle stops in the middle of the game trail they’re following. Tom, nodding distantly along to one of Draco’s rambles, holds up a hand to halt the others. “Peryle? Is something wrong?”

Peryle doesn’t call back. She and Susan seem to be examining a tree to the side of the narrow path. As Tom watches, Peryle reaches out to touch the rough bark, slow and reverent.

Susan shifts closer to her girlfriend’s side, stretching up on her tiptoes to whisper in her ear. A moment later she turns, freckled cheeks pinched in a smile. “Horsehair, Tom!”

Draco turns to Tom with an expression of deep confusion, but Tom’s already striding away toward the girls. “You don’t think – I suppose it makes sense, geographically speaking –”

Wordlessly, Peryle passes him a long strand of black hair. It certainly _looks_ like centaur hair.

“Can I borrow someone’s wand?” Tom asks. The loss of his wand burns like a mosquito bite: soothed if he doesn’t dwell on it, but unbearable when he slows down enough to notice its absence against his inner arm.

Luna ducks out from behind Ginny, eagerly proffering a wand of polished beechwood.

Tom purses his lips. “Thank you, Luna.” He should start carrying Harry’s wand. His pride can’t stand relying on his followers for something so trivial. Besides, Harry is competent enough without his wand that he wouldn’t be leaving him defenseless.

He mutters an identification spell over the hair, though he has to fight the wand to get it out. Ironically, unicorn hair cores have always disagreed with him.

“Definitely centaur,” he reports. “Though there’s no way of knowing if it came from your herd, Peryle.”

“I know,” Peryle says, something like pity evident in her dark eyes. “I just cast the same spell.”

Tom clears his throat. “Ah. Right.” He casts a glance over his shoulder and sees that none of the others save Luna are paying any attention – Harry and Lyra are making a spectacle conjuring illusory dragons to do battle in the canopy above. “There’s no use tracking them.”

Peryle nods. “They will be expecting us, I think.” Her eyes flick up to the clouded sky. “I am no diviner, but this path we walk is one of the few the stars could guarantee.”

“Wait – so you knew Dumbledore was going to send people after me? How much –”

Peryle shakes her head. “We knew you were going to leave Hogwarts – that one of you would make it out, at least. One of you, riding on a unicorn’s back… that image has been the only constant. The timing of it, the details, all of that was obscured. But there was no chance of you and Harry making it to graduation in the spring.”

Tom laughs humorlessly. “And the rest of you?”

“You’re lucky you have us. Like I said, I cannot read the stars as fluently as my family, but this might have been a very lonely road for you.”

“Well, me and Harry,” Tom says archly. He doesn’t think he’d mind being alone with Harry on this journey: just two renegades and the Forest, exploring the woods and each other in equal measure.

“Love experienced in a vacuum can be a very lonely thing,” Peryle says. “Even if the one you love is right at your fingertips.”

Tom ponders this for a moment, but he’s honestly never been one for philosophy. “So, what happens next?”

Peryle shrugs, letting the hair fall to the forest floor. “According to the stars? I honestly have no idea. But we should keep moving. Time will tell, right?”

“You’re right. I – thank you, I suppose.”

She turns and begins trotting back along the path, a new spring in her step. It’s been months since she last saw her herd, Tom realizes. He wishes he couldn’t empathize, but the sick feeling of hope that had seized him when he first saw Lily outside their dorm still burns hot in his veins. He knows, now, how it feels to be homesick for a family.

He snaps loudly enough to catch everyone’s attention and sets them filing after Peryle, then falls back to return Luna her wand.

“Hey, you,” Harry, walking closer to the front, calls back at Tom. He seems in high spirits.

Tom sticks his hands in his pockets, raising an icy eyebrow.

Harry stops moving, evidently waiting for Tom to catch up with him.

“Did you need something?” Tom asks.

“Just to hold hands,” Harry says lightly. “Are you all right, Tom? You look upset.”

“Oh.” Tom puts a hand to his face, prodding idly at the cold flesh. “I suppose I am. It’s not – I just. I’m dwelling, I suppose. I… seeing Lily disturbed me.”

Harry’s face goes abruptly flat. “Oh. Yes, I – I can see how that would be the case.”

“Hmm. Say, d’you still want to hold hands?”

Harry snatches Tom’s hand up almost immediately, scratching lightly at the back of it. The pressure is relaxing enough to bleed some of Tom’s stress away.

“Thanks,” Tom mutters, feeling obscurely embarrassed.

“’S just hand-holding.” Harry’s eyes crinkle in a muffled yawn. “Not a big deal.”

“No, I mean – I’m grateful for you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Harry looks down at their joined hands. Tom can’t see his expression. “You don’t need me to be happy, Tom. If I died, you would muddle through all right on your own.”

Tom tries to wrench his hand away, but Harry keeps a stubborn hold on it.

“Really, Tom. Look at me. We’re going into a war. This is something we have to face. I need to know that in my absence, you wouldn’t become –”

An agonized wheeze puffs out from Tom’s throat.

“ _Look_ at me,” Harry says.

Tom does. It’s still somewhat surreal to see his true face in the daylight, all angles and scar tissue, eyes sharp and unnatural as the smell of wood varnish.

“I need to know you wouldn’t become a monster without me,” Harry says firmly, grasp on Tom’s hand growing uncomfortably tight. “I need to know you’d put _them_ –” he makes a vague gesture at the straggling group of schoolchildren walking before them, “– in front of – of, I don’t know, vengeance or whatever.”

“Does it matter?” Tom’s voice breaks. He clears his throat. “You’re not going to die, Harry.”

“But if I do –”

“Death isn’t final. There are ways – I mean, you know better than anyone. When you crossed over to this plane, you essentially resurrected your parents.”

“That’s not what that was,” Harry says. “That had _much_ more to do with you than it did me.”

“Be that as it may –”

Before Tom can say anything more, Harry’s head snaps up, swiveling to survey the surrounding woods. Tom follows the direction of his gaze, but sees nothing but dark pine trunks and the scrambling husks of mountain huckleberry bushes. “What is it?”

“Hush.”

In the next moment, Tom hears it: the mournful call of a hunting horn and the pattering of a dozen hoofs surging together over the frosted moss of the Forest floor.

The others stop in their tracks, looking wary. Over their heads, Peryle exchanges a look of bright joy with Tom.

The centaurs are here at last.

***

They ride among the herd for miles. Harry quickly loses track of the sun through the branches overhead, and time and directionality both slip freely through his fingers. He buries his face in the neck of the hind he rides, barely registering the forest flashing by him in a blur of black trees and muddied snowdrifts.

The centaurs move in relative silence, but a wealth of intentions dwell in their lashing tails and the rhythm their hooves beat into the soil, the heaving of their flanks, the way they watch the humans in their midst. They’re wary. They know, Harry thinks, who killed the Mother.

Peryle rides near the front, abreast of her aunt. The two of them look as if they’re speaking, but Harry and the hind are too far away to catch so much as a whisper from them. On Peryle’s back sit Susan and Tom. Tom looks far more awake than Harry, sitting with the good posture of a violinist preparing a solo, hands resting lightly on Susan’s waist, his eyes cataloging the world with characteristic intensity.

The land under their feet shifts subtly as they press deeper into the foothills. Harsh snaps disturb the easy beat of the journey: hooves against bare rock, sending shards of quartz skittering across the path. Gradually, they stop cresting hills – there is nowhere to go but _up_ , and Harry realizes they have come at last to the true mountainsides. How strange, to finally find himself traveling along the slopes that had defined the boundaries of his childhood.

In his imaginings, the trees here grew purple and dense, like a field of heather given bodies of wood and the will to touch the sky. As the air thins, however, so does the greenery. The pines growing around them are proud, blue things, swaying in a wind imperceptible from the ground. No skeletal huckleberry bushes or clots of blood-colored ivy clog the ground. Harry looks up and sees, for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, an azure slice of sky.

They find a pass that cuts between two peaks, up so high that no trees grow and the ground is thick with old, icy snow. Harry turns to look over his shoulder, searching for a path home – the glint of the Black Lake, the top of the Astronomy Tower, some extra luster of magic to the wind – but he can discern nothing of Hogwarts. The trees, it seems, have swallowed the castle whole. It’s a strangely freeing thought.

The centaurs ford the banks of snow with practiced ease, taking the humans onto their backs to bear them safely through the cold.

Soon they’re descending again, into a valley where frost grows thicker than moss on the trees and the birdsong sounds like a homecoming. They come to a rest beside a river swirling with chunks of thin ice and choked with the husky remains of summer reeds, and follow its meandering course until it splits around a long, flat island.

Peryle’s aunt is the first to take the leap. She moves less like a horse and more like a cat, all tightly coiled muscles and calculated flight, before she lands with perfect poise on the bank of the island.

Harry shakes himself, dislodging the drowsy mist that has overlain his thoughts for the last however-many hours. He watches a yawning Tom tumble off Peryle’s back with Susan’s help. After the two of them have safely made it to the ground, Peryle backs up and takes a running leap, landing less gracefully across the water.

Around him, the others begin to dismount. Ginny stretches, vibrantly awake, her arm around a foggy-eyed Luna. Dahlia clings to Ginny’s elbow, looking around with tentative curiosity. A tall gray centaur sinks to his knees to let Lyra safely off his back.

Harry lays his cheek against the hind’s plush neck, loath to move. He’s beginning to nod off again despite his best efforts when Tom, standing at the riverbank and watching the centaurs leap, points to him and says, “Harry! Wand, Please.”

Without a word of instruction, the hind brings him to Tom’s side so he can pass over the slim holly wand. “Are we close, now?”

Tom takes it. “According to Dynea, we’re near the heart of their new range. This place was at the very outskirts of the oaks’ reign, but the soul drought never reached over the mountains.”

“Dynea?”

“The current matriarch.” Tom nods toward the shape of Peryle’s aunt across the water. “Susan and I spoke with her during the climb, and she offered us this place to stay.”

“Did she offer us a way across this river?” Harry asks flatly. “Because if we can’t –”

“Oh, hush,” Tom says with an idle flick of the holly wand. “What did you think I needed this for?”

Harry watches as a line of frostbitten tree roots tear themselves free from the soil at Tom’s command. Across the stream stretch mirrored roots, reaching out to entwine and form a thick, gnarled bridge.

Tom, looking pleased with himself, hands Harry back his wand and strides off towards his new bridge. Harry dashes after him, laughing under his breath and gesturing for the others to follow.

Peryle waits on the other side, her tail swinging with excitement. Out under the sky, there’s a new exuberance to her every movement – she doesn’t have to worry about knocking over furniture or hitting someone in the face. “There’s a little encampment downriver,” she says. “My family knew we would come, and they have prepared it for us. My aunt says it is shielded from the wind, and stocked with enough food to get us through the winter easily.”

“That’s great news.” Harry begins bouncing on the balls of his feet, infected by Peryle’s cheer. “You’re staying with us, then?”

“Of course,” she says dismissively. “Come on, then. We will have to hurry if we want everyone settled by dusk.”

The others file eagerly over the bridge and onto the bank, looking with bright eyes to Tom and Harry.

Harry glances around, taking in the fork in the icy river, the thorns of dead bushes, the black of the canopy high above. As the sky darkens, the cold of this frozen place over the mountains begins to strain the edges of his warming charm. “Home sweet home,” he mutters under his breath. Tom smiles wryly. Harry just wants a _nap_. Louder, he calls, “c’mon, then, everyone.”

A short way into the trees, they come upon a dip in the land where the rocky soil has been eroded away. As he draws closer, Harry sees that the area is sheltered on one side by a rocky overhang looming perhaps two meters above the ground, dripping with toothy icicles. The foot of the cliff is clear of both greenery and snow.

The chill is profound. Harry feels it down to his bones, feels it grappling with his throbbing heart. He’s still in that same set of torn, dirtied pajamas he’d run away in, and he misses his standard black wool robes with a passion.

“This will do nicely, I think,” Tom says, casting his eyes around the space.

“It’s certainly defensible.” Harry mutters a warming spell and straightens up, shaking out his numb fingers. “The cliff’s a good natural wall, and we’re surrounded by brambles – those won’t do much against a magical attacker, of course, but they at least provide a sight barrier. It would be better if we could burrow into the side of the hill.”

Tom blinks. “Good idea. I’ll look into it. In the meantime, though…” he holds out his hand for the wand.

“You’re getting a lot more use out of it than me these days,” Harry laughs, handing it over.

Tom takes it with a fleeting smile and sets to work warding the new campsite.

Harry sits in the shade of the overhang, plucking spiraling flowers of frost from the ground and watching them melt in his palms. The centaurs – aside from Peryle – leave soon after dropping them off, promising to ‘keep an eye on them’ and staring enigmatically up at the sunset-pinked clouds.

As Peryle promised, they have dozens of clay jars filled with preserved nuts and berries. Harry’s not convinced it will be enough to get them through the winter, but they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it.

The centaurs have also left them what looks like a full deer pelt. “For blankets,” Tom says when he sees it. “We cut it into squares, then use each one as a transfiguration base for a blanket. The spell should last for _ages_ , especially if the deer was exposed to a lot of magic during its lifetime. Living here, that’s almost a guarantee, especially if it was born before the oaks died.”

Hermione lights a bonfire in the center of the clearing, blue and bright and much more stable-looking than the fire from the night before. Daphne helps Tom with the wardings, trailed by Eliza and a shivering Calcifer. The others huddle together like wintering birds: Michael, Pansy, and Theo all cluster near Hermione, and Geoff seems to be trying to rub warmth into Dahlia’s hands. Lavender Brown and Cleo Fenwick, the only Gryffindors to answer their summons, seem ill at ease. Blaise is talking quietly to them and idly flipping an antique compass between his fingers.

Catching Harry’s eyes, Lyra picks her way across the clearing to his side.

“Are you sulking?” She toes him in the thigh. “Shouldn’t you be excited?”

He frowns up at her. “I’m too tired to be excited. And _far_ too cold.”

She kicks him again, less gently this time. “You’re magically exhausted, idiot. Did you not sleep properly last night?”

“I had nightmares.”

“Oh. Uh, d’you want to talk about it?”

“Nah. It’s nothing new.” Hissing basilisks, burning helicopters, the rattling scream of a falling oak; the Mirror of Erised showing him his true face, its eyes gone starkly red; Lily’s face lined in betrayal and horror… “Well, nothing I want to talk about, anyway.”

“All right.”

Harry sighs. “We should make ourselves useful. Are you any good at transfiguring blankets?”

Lyra wrinkles her nose at the deer skin in the corner. “Oh. I suppose I should get used to, ah, ‘ _roughing it_ ’, shouldn’t I?”

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Harry says. “Between the lot of us, we’ll have this place fancied up for you in no time.”

***

Harry rises with the sun, as ever, and finds himself in Tom’s arms.

“G’morning,” Tom says. He turns his head to yawn, breath billowing out in thick plumes of white. The world outside their blankets is murderously cold, but the warming charms built into their new blankets have served them well – Harry feels as comfortable as he would waking up back in the Slytherin common room.

“It’s still surreal, isn’t it?” Harry asks. “That we got away – that we _left_ in the first place.”

Tom burrows down further into their blankets, pulling them over his ears. “Not as if they gave us a choice.”

Harry frowns up into the dawn-pale sky. “I don’t think they wanted to kill you, Tom.”

“What?”

“I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t – that’s just not who Lily is. I know you two didn’t part on the best terms, but she still saw you as one of her children. And even if she _didn’t_ , I can’t imagine her sending anyone our age to our death without a trial.”

“So, they lied to her about their true intentions. That doesn’t exactly comfort me.”

“Really?”

Tom sticks his face back up out of the covers to blow out more mist. “Yeah, yeah… okay, maybe it comforts me a little.”

“I wonder how she and James are dealing with this… I mean, overnight, all their kids just –” Harry puffs out his cheeks and mimes a little explosion with his hands. “Gone.”

Tom hooks his chin over the blankets, squinting.

“Geoff and Dahl are just over there,” Harry says, pointing to where the two of them huddle together in a more sheltered section area. “We should get everyone up. There’s work to be done if we don’t want to have to sleep out in the elements another night.”

“I mean, you’re not _wrong_ ,” Tom says, smiling crookedly. He doesn’t move. Dew sticks his eyelashes together, and the muted light of the sky has softened out the thought lines on his forehead.

Harry pokes him in the side with a socked foot. “Useless layabout,” he says fondly.

Tom rolls over onto his side so he can look Harry in the eyes.

“What?”

“C’mere.”

And they _do_ have work to do, but it’s warm under the covers. Tom’s nose is icy, and his lips are soft, and kisses always taste sweetest in the wintertime.

***

Two winters ago, they had built a snow fort upon the hill overlooking the Black Lake. It had been a spindly, ephemeral thing, packed full of laughter and youthful joy. The coming war has leeched away some of that excitement, but their group is still an industrious one: between Tom and Hermione alone, there is determination enough to construct a thousand beautiful icy towers.

So when they finally rise from their blanket cocoons to transform the cliffside clearing, progress is swift. Harry enlists Michael, Hermione, and Lyra to help him tunnel into the cliffside while Tom, wandless, works with Daphne to seal the clearing against the cold.

The others split off and make themselves useful however they see fit: Dahlia tags along with Ginny’s clique on a ‘scouting mission’, Calcifer and Blaise begin taking inventory of their food stock, and Susan takes over from Hermione in stoking the bluebell bonfire in the center of the encampment.

By the time they break for lunch, the camp is a spot of warmth at the heart of the snowy Forest, and they’ve dug their way a cautious few meters into the cliffside without any difficulties. The ground is icy and hard, packed with boulders, but some well-placed Banishing spells make for quick work.

As Harry retreats back into the tunnels, this time with more help in tow, he hears Tom and Peryle begin to discuss something about ‘dome structure’.

“You seem happy,” Pansy comments idly, watching him summon stone supports as per Hermione’s safety instructions.

Harry hums. “It’s nice to have something to do. Plus, I’ve just remembered this means we don’t have to do that awful research project for Snape…”

She laughs. “Can you show me that wand movement again? I don’t want to screw up and bring the whole hillside crashing down on us.”

He does.

“What’s our plan, Harry? I… I kind of thought we’d be, I don’t know, planning attacks on the Ministry or trying to create a spy network. Instead we’re just –” she flicks her wand, summoning a ring of stone to curve around their tunnel like the ribs of a snake. “We’re just building stuff on a whim. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good distraction from reality, but…”

“But it seems frivolous.”

Pansy makes a face. “I hate that word. But… yeah.”

“Tom and I haven’t talked about it properly, but, uh. If our plan works, there are going to be a lot of wizards with nowhere to go. We can’t send them to Hogwarts: the castle doesn’t properly belong to the Forest, and even if it did, it’s controlled too closely by the Ministry.”

“So, you think building a sprawling underground palace is a good long-term investment.”

Harry shrugs. “If nothing else, it keeps people busy and gives us a roof over our heads. It also means we’ll have some privacy moving forward – sleeping practically on top of each other is all well and good, but in the long term it’ll lead to friction.”

“You’re pretty good at this, aren’t you?”

“I…” Harry’s wand falls to his side. “I feel like this is something I’ve been training for since I was a kid.”

“Tom said we weren’t allowed to ask you about why your face is different now.”

Harry reaches up to his own jaw. It feels the same as ever. Perhaps a bit dry from the cold air. “It’s not important.”

She clearly doesn’t believe him, but she drops it. They continue chatting quietly about nothing in particular as they carve their way deep into the earth. Harry’s wand vibrates in quiet harmony to the muted hum of the woods. He wonders how long it will be before the others begin to hear the song, too.

***

The weeks slide by like snowmelt: slowly at first, then in a rush of fresh joy and new routines. The tunnels soon become a twisting labyrinth, crawling with a magical species of blue ivy that Luna had uncovered in the depths of the woods and set loose upon the underground. They all spend most of their time in a central chamber, where Hermione’s magical bonfire burns surrounded by armchairs modeled after the ones in the Hufflepuff common room.

Deeper into the tunnels, though, space begins to warp. They all add to the earthen passages in their own ways, and they sprawl out into the hill for untold miles. There’s no way to know who had decided to transfigure a room to shards of crystal, or who had conjured a burbling stream to run, impossibly, along the ceiling of a passage. For all Harry knows, no one had conjured them at all. Out here, magic can easily take on a mind of its own.

He and Tom have a little room to the north. Its ceiling is hung with tiny stars like August fireflies, its floor carpeted with springy moss colored like blood and sustained by magic rather than sunlight. It’s warmer than their room in the Slytherin dorms, and even without their things it’s started to feel like home.

Above the clearing looms a glass dome that stretches from the top of the cliff overhead to the roots of the bramblebushes, shielding the cave system from the rest of the Forest. Etched into it are runes of protection and warmth, glowing gently on the metal ribbing that holds the glass in place.

As time wears on, they become more comfortable with the world beyond. Ginny’s scouting missions morph into full-grown expeditions: she, Luna, Geoff, and Dahlia leave for days at a time and come back with stories, maps, and the occasional wound.

Harry himself finds his purpose not out in the Forest, but within the dome they’ve carved out for themselves. He’d wanted a militia, after all – and a militia requires combat training and comradery, drills and strategizing.

“You’re as bad as your father,” Lyra says after the first week. “I thought we came here to get away from school.”

“It’ll be worth it,” Harry says. And indeed, by the time the leaves on the deciduous trees are full, they’ve grown into a fighting force the likes of which should terrify the Ministry.

Their first mock battle changes the flow of the glacier melt river in its intensity. Tom plucks griffons from the sky and battles them against Susan’s conjured flock of flamingoes. Geoffrey burns almost half an acre of trees to the ground with a nasty curse he’d picked up from Ginny, while Daphne creates a monster with a body like a tornado and hands of stormclouds to send her opponents spinning into the air.

Even Pansy and Blaise, who have never matched their peers in combat spells, have mastered shielding and precision casting. On their own, they’re hardly deadly, but James had trained them all to fight in pairs. Pansy and Daphne, it turns out, make a terrifying duo.

It stops turning his stomach to watch his friends becoming soldiers. Perhaps, he thinks, that’s worse than the shame.

_They made this choice_ , he tells himself. _They know what they’re getting into as well as I do_.

Some nights, he wanders aimlessly through the tunnels in the cliffside, wishing for the strength to cry.

They fill their days with softer things, too: Harry starts working on hair magic again and finds that he isn’t half-bad as a barber. The others learn to seek him out when they need a trim. He cuts Dahlia’s hair short and springy, gives Pansy a set of bangs, and lingers for nearly an hour over Tom’s cut, half trying to get it perfect, half just enjoying an excuse to run his fingers through his head of dark hair.

Tom doesn’t even call him out on it; he seems as desperate as Harry is for an excuse to sit together in the late spring sunlight. Harry remembers their first summer together, stealing Lily’s Muggle papercutting scissors and holing up in the bathroom. Tom had sat on the toilet and watched through dark, wary eyes as Harry had shorn off his long curls. Now, he closes his eyes and relaxes into Harry’s touch, impossibly trusting.

How far they’ve come. Harry touches Tom and feels like his blood is made of gold, like he’s a carrier pigeon finally returned home, like his wrists don’t chafe with the burden of destiny.

In the meantime, Calcifer becomes very adept at tree climbing. Harry isn’t sure what to make of this. “I’m trying to get a signal,” Calcifer finally admits, opening his pack to show Harry the magical phone from the Room of Requirement.

“And how’s that going for you?” Harry asks, amused.

“It works about one in every three days,” Calcifer says brightly, giving the device a gentle pat. “I think that’s worth getting a bit dirty, yeah?”

Harry hums noncommittally and slips away to gossip to Tom about pureblood heirs dallying with Muggles. It’s strange, all living together in such close proximity – hard for anyone to keep secrets.

Everyone knows that Michael and Pansy are together again, and that the two of them have been spending an awful lot of time around Hermione. Everyone knows about the stash of mushrooms Blaise and Theo are cultivating together. Everyone knows that Eliza and Daphne kissed once, and never spoke of it again; that Geoff’s been stealing nuts from the food supply to feed the local squirrels; that Harry and Tom don’t have sex.

It’s like having a massive, messy family, or at least that’s what Harry thinks. Just with an awful lot more teenage angst and spontaneous duels. He kind of loves it.

***

“I think I have a plan,” Tom says, hands behind his back, looking uncharacteristically uncertain.

He and Harry are wandering alongside the riverbank. It’s late May, the warmest day of this year so far. The river whispers by, smelling like the cool air of the mountains and casting a fine mist into the air.

Harry looks up, feeling a sick squirm of dread in his gut. He’s known this was coming. They can’t afford to stagnate. Still, the notion of willingly leaving behind this sanctuary and throwing themselves into the war of the older generations is choking in its inevitability. “What sort of plan?”

Tom looks over at him, eyes dark and piercing. “You’re afraid.”

“Not for my own life.”

“You never are.” He sounds frustrated.

“Maybe it’s better if the majority of us don’t fight,” Harry says carefully. “I could take a small, elite group with me to the Ministry while you and the others wait here, where it’s safe. If we managed to get close enough to kill Dumbledore, the Dark Mantle would pass to you – then you could come join us, and we could get the entire wizarding population to safety.”

“That’s not a bad plan,” Tom allows.

“I’ve… I’ve been considering it for a while.”

“ _But_ ,” Tom says.

Harry kicks at the pebbles under his feet, scowling. “But?”

“I’m still bound to compete in the Triwizard Tournament.”

Harry freezes. “Oh, sliming hell. Oh, _fuck_. When’s the final task? We have, what, a month? We’ll need to move quickly if we want to strike before then.”

“No, Harry, don’t you see? It’ll give me the perfect excuse to get close to Dumbledore. He’s a judge. He has to attend the tasks. And as soon as I’m done with whatever it is, I’ll just have to wait for an opportune moment.”

“I don’t like it,” Harry says immediately.

Tom rolls his eyes.

“What? You’re good, Tom, but he’s had over a hundred years of experience. Even if you catch him off his guard, we both know it’s a coin toss which of you would win in a duel.”

“Oh, and your little team assault is a better plan? Come _on_ , Harry.” Tom looks away, mouth tight. He doesn’t like the idea any more than Harry does.

“You want me to talk you out of this, don’t you… but you’ve already thought through all the eventualities.”

“Obviously.”

“And you think this is our best shot?”

Tom stops walking. Even in the leaf-speckled sunlight, he looks pale, the hollows in his cheeks stark. “I do.”

“Then we’ll do it. We have to.”

Tom slips off his boots and socks to wade in the shallows of the stream.

“Is it cold?”

“Absolutely frigid.”

Harry takes off his own footwear and delves in after him. “’S not that bad.”

“Not all of us can be impervious to the elements,” Tom says with exaggerated stuffiness.

Harry leans heavily against him. “Some wizard you are.”

Tom huffs. “Isn’t my competence the entire point?”

Harry scuffs at the algae-slick stones under his feet, suddenly tired of this conversation. “Race you.”

“What?”

Harry leaps forward, throwing off his human skin as he goes, and the ram and the unicorn chase each other into the wood.

***

Spring slips by bitterly quickly, the deadline of the third task screaming toward them at an inescapable pace. Their plan is a carefully-wrought, flexible thing – tight enough to give Tom solace, but not rigid enough that Harry would shatter it by improvising.

Harry _knows_ he’s going to have to end up improvising. That’s how these things _go_. They don’t have enough information to guess how the Ministry will react.

The night before the task, all is hectic preparations and anxious silences. Harry finds himself without a duty, loitering in the central chamber and wishing someone would slow down to talk with him.

It’s with relief, then, that he feels a hand on his shoulder.

“You look jumpy as hell.” It’s Tom, of course. Even now, after over a year of dating, just the sight of him is enough to make Harry’s stomach summersault. “Shouldn’t you be busy ordering people around?”

Impulsively, Harry lunges up on his tiptoes to catch Tom’s mouth on his own, throwing his arms around his neck.

Tom pulls back slightly, looking delighted. His eyes dart around the room, taking in the others watching. “Oh…? Public displays of affection?”

Harry rubs away the heat in his neck. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Hmm.”

“Hey, I don’t think I’m going to be able to be productive for the rest of today…”

“You want to go to bed early?”

“Yeah. What time is it, anyway?” Harry looks up at the earth ceiling as if the answers could be hiding there.

Tom lets out a quiet breath of amusement. “Doesn’t matter. A bit of extra rest will do us good.”

Harry lets go of his face so he can hold onto his hand and squeeze. “Yeah. Alright, then.”

The path through the tunnels to their room changes daily, but Harry always knows the way. He’s learned not to question it.

They share a bed molded from moss and tree roots, where they sleep every night surrounded by magic and the warmth of each other. Harry sits on its edge, letting his hands dangle like dead things, feeling untethered and far too alert for rest.

Tom sits next to him, shoulder at the perfect height for Harry to lean his head. Instead, he reaches up to touch Tom’s cheek.

Tom kisses him hungrily, clinging to the front of his shirt. It’s easy, and familiar. Harry tries to focus on that: the warmth of routine, the taste of Tom, the feel of his teeth nipping at Harry’s lip – anything but the desperate edge to the kiss, the way Tom grips him like a drowning man to driftwood.

Harry runs a thumb under Tom’s eye, but it comes away dry. “It’s okay to cry, Tom.”

Tom goes stiff in his arms.

Harry lets go of him and curls up on the bed, arms out. “C’mere, you. Let’s just sit together, yeah?”

It’s difficult to make out Tom’s face in the meager light of the underground stars. After a moment, though, he comes closer and slots himself into Harry’s space.

“You’re the bravest person I’ve ever known,” Harry says softly, hands settling on the hard planes of Tom’s shoulder blades. “It took me a long time to realize that.”

“I’ve never cared much for courage,” Tom mutters.

“And yet, you’ve still volunteered to go on a deadly mission and duel against the most powerful wizard in millennia for the sake of a vague ideal. What could be braver than that?”

“You’re making me want to back out,” Tom mumbles, jabbing him in the stomach. “Such Gryffindor attempts at flattery aren’t going to work on me.”

Harry wriggles away, laughing. “I was trying to be serious!”

Tom catches him by the waist, long fingers dancing up and down his sides.

“You _bastard_! Tickling’s cheating, we’ve established this!”

Tom chuckles richly, then cuts off as Harry rolls on top of him.

Harry kisses him on the nose, barely holding back a snicker. “There, see? This is better.”

Rather than respond, Tom pulls him into another kiss. This one is long and shallow, easy to relax into. He’s not sure how long they lay there, exchanging lazy kisses, but it’s enough to send him drowsing.

“Harry?”

“Hmm?”

“I… my heart’s been behaving strangely.”

Harry jolts back, suddenly very awake, hands going to the scaled lump of wood under Tom’s wool pajama shirt. “What do you mean? Are you – are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It’s not – it’s not a _bad_ strange, as far as I can tell.” Tom squirms out from under him and unbuttons his shirt so Harry can see the swirling pattern of bark set into his chest.

“ _Oh_ ,” Harry says, leaning in to see it closer. The bark has grown to cover Tom’s entire shoulder and down his ribs, sprouting through his skin as if from the bones themselves. “That – Tom, that _looks_ like a bad kind of strange. That looks like it could be _very_ bad. Is it still, like, working normally?”

“It’s been fine,” Tom says with surprising calm. “The – the growth has been happening ever since we came to the Forest. I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed.”

Harry shrugs, feeling bizarrely guilty. Of everyone they brought to the Forest, he knows he’s the only one who ever sees Tom with his shirt off.

“That’s not the interesting part, though.” Tom twists so Harry can see his back. “D’you see it?”

Harry flicks his wrist to produce a dull _Lumos_. “It’s grown branches?”

“Look closer.”

He sucks in a quick breath. “Flowers. It’s _flowering_.” The oak flowers are small, muted things, hanging in ropes from the twigged back of Tom’s wooden prosthesis. “What the fuck.”

“I don’t know what it means,” Tom says. “I just thought you should be aware…”

Harry lifts up a strand of flowers, examining them in the wandlight. “What’ll we do if they start producing acorns or something?”

“We’ll plant them,” Tom says, like it’s easy. “This could be our path to returning the Forest to what it once was.”

“You’re telling me a bunch of dead trees are using my boyfriend as a surrogate parent,” Harry says, “and you expect me to just accept that?”

Tom blinks at him over his shoulder, lips twitching. “It sounds weird when you put it like that.”

“That’s because it _is_ , Tom.”

Tom prods at his own chest, looking thoughtful.

“I… I suppose now isn’t the time to deal with that, though. You need your rest if we’re going to get you to Hogwarts in time for the task.” They’re planning to wake at dawn and send Tom with Ginny on her broom, dropping him off just in time to fulfill the Goblet’s obligation and face Dumbledore.

Tom collapses back onto their magicked mattress as if all the breath has been crushed completely out of him, holding out his arms in invitation. Harry settles into them and closes his eyes. Like this, he can imagine that all is well. He is warm, and loved, and safe.

***

Harry wakes to an uncomfortable warmth and Tom’s startled shout.

“What’s wrong?” he gasps, bolting upright. “Tom?”

“They must have changed something,” Tom says, hands fluttering urgently. “Changed the timing – of _course_ , I should have seen it –”

Harry takes him by the shoulders, searching his eyes. “The Tournament? What are you –?” Tom’s skin is _burningly_ warm. He snatches his hands away, flinching.

Tom shakes out his hands again, and this time blue sparks fly out from his fingertips.

Harry pushes away, driven by an instinctual terror.

Across from him, Tom stills, somehow managing to return to a steady calm despite the situation. “The task must be starting now. The Goblet is… it’s got its hooks in me.”

“Is it going to…”

“I don’t know what it’s going to do to me.” Tom looks away. “This is fresh ground, as far as my research is concerned… Champions don’t make a habit of not showing up to their tasks.”

“There must have been some sort of precedent,” Harry says. “ _Tom_. What do we _do_?”

“We assume the best.” Tom jumps to his feet, shaking out his sleep-unsteady limbs. “The Goblet is fire-associated, so it has a runic association with transportation magic… there’s no reason to assume it wouldn’t possess the power to summon champions to itself. Now, if we assume Drunstark’s seventh law applies in this instance –”

“ _Focus_ , Tom. What do you need from me?”

Tom blinks rapidly, biting down hard on his tongue. “Wand. I – shit, I need to find a shirt…”

Harry flails out of bed, grabbing the holly wand off the ground and digging around under the bed. “Ha! _There_ it is.”

He emerges just in time to see Tom throw a battered red t-shirt over his head. It clashes awfully with his gray plaid pajama pants.

“Not exactly Minister-slaying attire.”

“This is not the time for snark, young man,” Tom mutters in what Harry thinks is meant to be an impression of Snape’s voice. He holds out his hand, long fingers untrembling.

Up close, the heat coming off his skin is thick and terrible. When he moves his bare feet across the ground, sparks fly up. There’s a blue glow under his skin, glittering through his eyes and turning them a color wholly unlike the brown Harry knows. For a moment, Harry allows himself to consider the terrible possibility that the Goblet really does kill truant champions.

“Harry.”

He presses the wand into Tom’s palm, then offers up the second thing he had grabbed.

“The Invisibility Cloak. Won’t you need that?”

“Not as much as you will,” Harry says.

Tom reaches out and takes it with the same hand that bears the Gaunt ring. “Thank you, Harry.”

The heat has grown so great that Harry is forced to take a step back. Tom tilts his head up, awash in blue light. He looks utterly alien, and more beautiful than Harry could have imagined. Still, the expression of mingled fear and determination on his face is more familiar than the sound of Harry’s own voice vibrating in his skull.

“I love you,” he says fiercely. “Tom Riddle, I love you so, _so_ much.” He’s never said it aloud before, but he feels it with every bone in his body.

Tom opens his mouth as if to respond, but all that comes out is fire the color of the summer sky.

And then he’s gone, falling to pieces, and Harry is left with ashes and the phantom of heat on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehehe. Happy Valentino bag, everyone <3


	35. The Oaks' Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and the others search for Tom.

“Get everyone up,” Harry snaps.

Daphne blinks blearily, sitting up in bed. “Harry? What – the sun’s not even up!”

Already sprinting toward the surface, he makes no response but to shout, “get everything you need and meet me up above!”

His voice echoes strangely through the tunnels, as if they’re amplifying the sound, trying to help. He can only hope.

He hurtles out of the cave system to a sky barely softened by dawn, the summer air still chill with night. No wand, only half-dressed, wild with panic. _Fuck_ , what a disaster.

Ginny, Peryle, and Dahlia emerge just on his heels.

“What’s going on?” Ginny asks sharply, holding her wand in one hand and her racing broom in the other. “Where’s Tom?”

“The Goblet took him away,” Harry pants. “He must be back at Hogwarts. We need to go get him –”

“What do you mean, ‘the Goblet took him’?” Hermione asks from the mouth of the cave. Though she yawns, her eyes are clear. Michael and Pansy stand at her shoulder, looking disoriented and sleep-ruffled.

“He –” Harry forces himself to take a deep breath, conjuring that last vision of Tom’s face to ground himself. Ethereally beautiful, calm despite the monstrous fire eating its way through his veins… he needs Harry to handle this with a level head. “Tom and I awoke this morning to find Tom – burning up, I suppose? He didn’t seem like he was in pain, but – well, I suppose that isn’t important…”

“Right.” Hermione steps forward to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. “And you said he disappeared after that?”

“Right through the anti-Apparition wards,” Harry confirms, pulse beginning to steady. “I think it was a bit closer to Floo travel. He just… dissolved into blue fire.”

Hermione’s eyebrows draw together. “Okay.”

“He thought it was a mechanism to make sure champions can’t skip tasks… they must have decided to hold the task early in the day. Trying to throw us off, probably?”

“Or the task is something that needs to be done at dawn,” Hermione says, frowning up at the sky.

Above them, beyond the glass of the dome, clouds roll in heaps of gray, edged in scalding gold. Behind the mountains, the sun must be rising. “Like that’s not ominous as hell,” Harry mutters.

“Are we leaving already?” Elias Clearwater sticks his head out of the caves – almost everyone is up now.

Harry curls his bare toes into the grass. “We’re going to have to move up our timeline a bit, that’s all. Tom’s already gone.”

Calcifer pushes his way to the front. “Gone? How?”

“The Goblet of Fire ate him or something,” Michael says. “Harry, you’re _sure_ he’s not dead?”

“We have to assume he’s okay,” Draco says, sounding as desperate as Harry feels. “Right, Potter?”

“Right.” Harry locks his hands behind his back and turns to face the others. In the thin light, they all look so _young_. “Okay. We need to get moving. You all know your roles. Susan, I’m putting you in charge of the attack on the Ministry.”

“But you –”

“I’m going to Hogwarts,” Harry says firmly. “Tom’s going to need backup.”

“The plan –”

“We’re improvising,” Harry says. “Luna, Geoff, Peryle, and – and Calcifer. You four with me. We’re going to take the hinds. We’ll meet the rest of you at the Ministry as soon as possible.”

Susan nods and gives the others the signal to summon their broomsticks.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Peryle asks softly.

“No,” Harry admits. “But if we can give him an edge in his fight against Dumbledore…”

“I understand,” Peryle says, glancing furtively over at Susan. “Well, then. Let us go rescue your love.”

***

Tom’s wisdom teeth ache in his skull. The blue fire of the Goblet has left him shaken, but unsinged.

He stands at the foot of the Forest stadium. The steps that once held so many spectators sit empty, eerie in the muted sunlight. Why has the Goblet brought him here, to this deserted ghost of an arena?

Well, no. Not completely deserted. Tom turns away from the stands and finds two figures watching him, and beyond them –

“Minister Dumbledore.” He covertly waves Harry’s wand over his clothes, transfiguring them into more formal robes. The transformation won’t hold up under scrutiny, but it’s better than standing here in his pajamas.

The silvered old man inclines his head. “Tom. Welcome. I will be your sole judge today.”

“Do the rules allow for that?” Tom asks distractedly, doing his best to assess the battlefield. More than anything else, he want to throw the Invisibility Cloak over his shoulders and run.

“My colleagues agreed that this would be the most efficient course of action given the… situation,” the Minister says. He folds his hands behind his back, smiling paternally. “I’m sure you can agree.”

The first golden rays of sunlight catch on the top of the empty arena, blinding against the lingering shadows. “I’m sorry… the situation, sir?”

“Of course.” Dumbledore chuckles. “You wouldn’t have heard, would you? No matter. It’s time for the task to begin. We can talk later.”

Tom feels sick with unease. “Later. Yes.” He clings to the liquid Cloak and does his best to restrain the unicorn and its rage. “And the rules of the task…?”

“A simple duel,” Dumbledore says, brandishing his wand, and for a moment Tom is almost _sure_ –

The other two figures straighten up, and Tom finally recognizes Omar and Katarina. A duel against his peers, then. Thank goodness. He wonders if Dumbledore has guessed at his true plans…

“On three,” says the Minister.

Tom plants his feet shoulder-width apart and gives Harry’s wand a few experimental flicks.

“Two.”

The sun has risen further, and he can see well enough to make out the single-minded concentration in the set of Katarina’s jaw. Omar’s eyes flick between the two of them. Three-way duels are funny things – is it best for two duelists to gang up on the third, or to strike at a distracted enemy? To hide beneath a shield, or go on an instant offensive?

“One.” A beacon of pure white light arcs up from Dumbledore’s wand, illuminating every blade of grass below their feet in stark glory. The Minister himself vanishes, somehow – but Tom doesn’t have time to ponder that now.

Katarina and Omar cast in the same instant: Omar a low-level, probing spell, Katarina something so nasty Tom doesn’t even bother trying to shield. He ducks out of the way, mind clattering. Katarina prefers offensive casting. If he can throw her off her rhythm –

Omar slices his wand through the air, tearing the earth itself apart under Tom’s feet. He scrambles backwards and barely dodges another curse from Katarina.

 _Right_. This is fine. He’s just a bit off-balance, unprepared to fight two such skilled enemies at once.

He erects a thick shield against Omar’s barrage and aims a Bloodthorn curse at Katarina, swearing as she dodges it neatly. His shield shatters with a sound like rolling thunder, and Tom has to throw himself to the ground to avoid a plume of green flame from Omar.

Just as soon, the earth begins quaking once more.

This isn’t sustainable. They’ve got Tom on the ropes already, barely a minute into the match. If he can pull off a self-transfiguration, maybe under the distraction of a summoned animal –

A minor cutting charm lances through the air and scores a line of clean pain across his cheek. _You’re at your best when you’re on the offensive_ , he thinks in Harry’s voice. _Stop bloody stalling and_ finish _them. You always do this when you’re up against two opponents. It’s a bad habit left over from too much one-on-one training_.

Tom dodges smoothly away from another curse, humming under his breath. The dirt under his feet is muddy with dew and lush with shin-high grass. This place still echoes with the memory of the oaks in the same way everywhere in the Forest does, the same song that beats through his blossoming heart.

Under his feet, the grasses rise, weaving themselves into the shape of massive dragons. They rip free of the earth and create a wall of shifting plant matter. The wind whistles hauntingly through them, like the screams of a dying tree.

That should buy him some time. Tom presses the tip of Harry’s wand against his spine and concentrates. He holds the image of a marsh hawk in his mind, its green eyes bright with affection. Hollow bones, flared feathers, one with the air.

As the woven creatures collapse into flame, Tom flings himself into the dawn sky, wings flared outwards. _Now strike_ , Harry’s voice whispers. _You have good instincts, Tom. Trust them_.

Omar and Katarina haven’t spotted him yet. From up above, he has a clean shot at both of them.

“ _Expelliarmus_ ,” he incants at the height of his winged jump. Flying is more difficult than he had expected, but his aim is true; Katarina’s wand shoots out of her hand and into the sky, moving too quickly for him to grab it out of his uncontrolled glide.

Katarina, cursing, looks up and spots him.

Before Omar can fire off a spell, Tom plucks a hair from his head and releases it into the breeze. As it falls, it transforms into a sleek black cat with a pair of trim wings. Omar screams as it lands on his head, buying Tom just enough time for a graceless landing.

He folds his conjured wings behind his back and grits his teeth against the painful thudding of his heart. “ _Accio_ Katarina’s wand,” he tries, but to no avail; _Accio_ usually doesn’t work on wands. “D’you surrender?” he calls to Katarina, pulling up a shield against Omar’s desperate, cat-hampered spells.

Katarina scowls and raises her arms, eyes narrowed in concentration.

An attempt at wandless casting. Though he’s curious to see if she can pull it off, it’s not worth the risk. Tom snaps his fingers, and the grass below her feet rises to bind her. “Well?”

Omar manages to dispel Tom’s conjured animal and renew his offensive. Hissing in irritation, Tom drops his shield and starts firing back.

For a third time, Omar casts a spell to tear apart the earth. With the wings, it’s much easier to dodge out of the way, but Tom’s still starting to feel winded. This much physical exertion isn’t good for his heart.

“Fine!” Katarina says.

Tom throws a clod of mud into the air. As it flies, it transforms into a thick black serpent. “Fine, what?”

“I surrender!”

“ _Thank_ you.” Tom sidesteps a pillar of fire and summons a flock of ravens. A curse clips the edge of his left wing and he pulls it close to his chest, barely containing a shout.

The pain travels up the conjured appendage, spiked and horrible. Tom sheds the wings abruptly, and they shrivel off his back and into dust. He’s left hollow-boned and cold – and shaken with the knowledge that Omar is shooting to kill. He had identified Katarina as the biggest threat, but perhaps that assessment had been flawed.

The stream of spells slows as the ravens descend upon the Beauxbatons champion. In the grass before him, Tom can see the outline of his python slipping her way ever-closer, undetected. He sends a barrage of jinxes toward Omar to help keep him distracted, waiting for the eventual shout –

“Ahh! _Putain_!” Omar screams. The ravens withdraw, flying a mocking loop around his head as the python pins his arms to his side and _squeezes_. “Riddle, is this thing venomous?”

“Very.”

The python hisses in wordless laughter, opening her mouth wide as though trying to determine if she could eat Omar whole.

“Get it off me!”

Tom wanders closer, making a show of nonchalance. “Oh? Is she bothering you?”

“Enough with the games, Riddle!”

The sun has risen just enough to illuminate the tops of the trees. The sky hangs above them, pale blue and impassive. “Surrender.”

Dumbledore appears from his periphery as though he had never gone, hands behind his back, watching their interaction with detached interest.

“Well?” Tom asks, impatient. He hadn’t realized how much his competitors were ruled by pride – though he knows to say as much out loud would make him a hypocrite.

“I surrender,” Omar relents, closing his eyes and leaning away from the serpent winding around his chest.

“Thank you,” Tom says softly. In a wave of Harry’s wand, all his conjurations fall away to ash and the grass returns to normal.

Dumbledore places a withered hand on his shoulder, and Tom jumps. Up close, the _wrongness_ of the old man’s eyes seems more glaring than ever. “It appears we have our Triwizard Champion,” he says. “Congratulations, Tom… but Omar was right. The time for games is over. Come, now – it’s well past time for us to get down to business.”

He raises his other hand, and Tom sees gripped within it a strange silver coin. _A Portkey_. Dumbledore taps the center of it with his long, strange wand, and it pulses.

“Grab hold,” he tells Tom.

Tom bites down his apprehension and obeys.

“Thank you,” says Dumbledore. “Now: to the Atrium, please.”

***

Harry grips tightly to the neck of one of the hinds as it pelts through the Forest, crossing impossible distances in a span of moments. Geoff rides behind him, holding his waist and whooping ecstatically.

Peryle, running abreast of them, grins.

In Harry’s dread, it’s easy to forget how excited the others are for this mission – but they’ve spent the last few months training for this. Of course they’re desperate to whet their appetite for battle.

He turns into the wind, trying to summon the same heady anticipation in himself, but he’s too caught up in that last glimpse of Tom, flame clawing up from his insides, the smell of burning hair thick on the air.

The sun begins to crest over the mountains, illuminating the canopy in a riot of golden-green. Harry realizes abruptly that he recognizes this path: they’re just minutes away from Hogwarts.

The third task could be anywhere on the grounds. The Quidditch pitch, inside the castle itself, the old Forest arena… for all Harry knows, they had moved the location off-campus entirely.

What would Tom do, if their situations were reversed? He’d come up with a proper searching order, probably, and delegate to the others. The easiest place to check would be – the Forest. Of _course_.

Harry shuts his eyes and _listens_.

Above all else ring the hoofbeats of the hinds, beating a rapid tattoo into the dirt. The wind through the trees whistles in haunting counterpoint, and beyond that –

Birdsong, Harry thinks at first. But no mortal bird can warble like an operetta and pop like a bonfire all at once. _Phoenix song_.

“That way,” Harry points the hind toward the sound. It wheels in the direction of his finger, speeding up, and the sunlit crowns of the trees blur together over their heads.

 _We’re coming, Tom_ , he thinks, inhaling the fresh scent of the summer morning and feeling hope take wing in his chest. Geoff’s anticipation is infectious.

They plunge over the crest of a hill and come upon the ancient Forest stadium that had held the first task, just in time to watch the flare of a Portkey.

Harry’s stomach drops with horror as he watches the love of his life slip away for the second time today.

***

The Portkey activates in a sickening lurch. Were it not for the old man’s vicelike grip on his shoulder, Tom would have fallen on the dismount. It’s only the third time in his life that he’s used a Portkey things – he tries to avoid the things when possible.

He recovers quickly from the near-stumble and finds himself in the heart of the Ministry, surrounded by cold black stone and none of the bustling workers he had come to expect from this place. “Where is everyone, sir?”

“They’re elsewhere, awaiting commands.”

“What commands, sir?” Tom feels powerfully uneasy. First the lack of an audience for the third task, now the Ministry itself abandoned? “What have I missed?”

“We formally declared war this morning,” says the old man coolly, steering Tom towards a lift set into the wall.

Tom keeps his feet moving despite the reeling shock in his mind. “Why _now_?”

“We knew that today, the final piece of our plan would be returning to us.” The doors of the lift close behind them with a cheery chime. Dumbledore presses a button and folds his hands behind his back, waiting.

“The final piece… me?”

“You always _have_ been self-centered.” The Minister glances down at him with none of the disdain Tom would expect to accompany that statement. “Yes, Tom. Why did you think I sent for you this February? We have an important task for you.”

“I thought you were going to kill me,” Tom says numbly.

Dumbledore blinks twice in rapid succession. “My dear boy, why would I – ah, over that little speech you gave? Hardly. One passionate schoolchild can’t do much against decades of propaganda.”

“I managed to snatch the brightest minds of our generation out from under your nose,” Tom says. “Fat lot of good your propaganda did against that.”

Dumbledore _chuckles_. Somehow, that’s far more intimidating than anything else he had done. “I admit, I didn’t expect that from you… and your Mister Potter, I suppose. Quite the team you two make.”

Tom shudders.

The elevator pulls to a stop with a cheerful _ding_. “Ah, here we are,” Dumbledore says affably. “You are, of course, familiar with the Department of Mysteries.”

“Yes, sir.” His hand has not returned to Tom’s shoulder, but they both know where the power lies between the two of them. Tom tightens his hold on Harry’s wand and passes his thumb over the comforting coolness of the Cloak under his transfigured robes.

At a gesture from Dumbledore, Tom steps out into the hallway. _Spine straight_ , he tells himself. _Chin up. This isn’t far off from the plan_ … But the plan hadn’t accounted for war proceedings already moving forward, or this secret project. For all Tom knows, they’re already too late to prevent the end of the Statute of Secrecy.

The Department of Mystery is just as he remembers from all those horrible visits nearly three years ago. Walls of polished obsidian, a high ceiling, no ornamentation to speak of. While he can see his surroundings clearly, he can’t make out a source of illumination.

They walk the corridor for what feels like an eternity, following so many twists and turns that Tom loses track. Every so often, they’ll pass an open door, and he’ll glimpse impossible things: the pupil of an eye as long as he is tall, a figure of shadow and bone, a room whose contents he forgets as soon as he looks away.

They pass no Unspeakables in the hall. Their absence, somehow, is more unsettling than even their hooded presence would have been. Tom opens his mouth, thinking to ask Dumbledore about the Department of Mysteries’ part in the war effort. He restrains himself with some effort. Part of him doesn’t want to hear the answer.

The only sound is the echo of their boots against smooth stone. The strange architecture of the corridors distorts the footfalls, until Tom becomes certain they’re being pursued. When he turns to look over his shoulder, though, he finds them alone in the sterile black hallway.

Finally, Dumbledore comes to a halt in front of another seemingly nondescript door. “Ready, Tom?”

Tom swallows. “Ready for what, sir?” For all his bravado, it comes out shaky. _Get out of here_ , he urges himself. _You have the Cloak. He didn’t bother taking away your wand_. He can’t leave, though. For one thing, he’s hopelessly lost; for another, this is the closest he’s come to Dumbledore in months. If he can’t kill him now, all is lost.

The Minister laughs mirthlessly. For a moment Tom thinks he can see the barest fleck of red to his eyes, like an ember flaring in the wind. “Oh, yes. You’re ready.”

With one withered hand, the old man pushes open the door.

***

Harry throws himself bodily off the back of his hind and nearly twists his ankle. Ignoring the spike of pain, he races toward the spot Tom had just vanished from.

“Harry!”

“What happened here?” he barks at the boy standing by, massaging his throat – the Beauxbatons champion, he recognizes belatedly.

“ _Harry_!” Geoff scrambles off the deer’s back and stands by his side. “Merlin, be _careful_!”

Harry flexes his scarred right hand, feeling naked without his wand. “Tom Riddle was just here. Where did he go?”

“I –” Omar’s gaze lands on the other figure. _Durmstrang_ _champion_ , Harry notes. Katie? Cath? No. Katarina. “I don’t know – the Minister –”

“You’re the feral children, aren’t you?” Katarina asks, her accented voice thorned with derision. “The ones who went off to the Forest to _play_ while the rest of us dealt with the current crisis.”

Harry’s blood runs cold. He’s not sure if he’s angry or _terrified_. “Excuse me?” His voice slips out of his mouth like a dead serpent. God, he hates himself when he gets like this. He’s used to the buffer of Tom, but without him he just feels unsteady.

“You don’t even know what’s happening, do you?” Katarina frowns. “I’m not trying to insult you. You just – you just _hid_. You have no _idea_.”

 _It was a strategic retreat_ , drawls Tom’s voice in Harry’s head. Stupid Slytherin. “What happened, then? What does that have to do with Tom?”

“The British Ministry just declared war on your Muggle government,” Katarina says. “I imagine your dear Dumbledore wanted to add Tom to his ranks of soldiers, yes? They’ve spent the last month or two on conscription efforts. They even tried to recruit _me_ into the service of your country.” She scoffs.

“They wanted anyone over the age of seventeen,” Omar adds. “Lots of talk of international unity.” He frowns over at Katarina. “Is it so ridiculous that they tried to enlist us, too? After today, no wizard will be able to hide. This is a war that belongs to all of us, no matter where it happens to _start_.”

“What, so you’re going to play soldier for the British? I thought better of you, Bisset.”

“Some dear friends of mine have enlisted,” Omar says stiffly. “I haven’t. Yet.”

Harry pats fruitlessly as the back pocket of his fraying jeans, still missing his wand. “You said nothing will be the same after today – what does that mean? Is the Statute of Secrecy broken?”

Omar sticks a hand into the sky, and the first rays of day turn his fingertips to gold. “They said they’d strike at dawn.”

“They…?”

Katarina rolls her eyes, then swishes her wand in a quick summoning. “Here’s a copy of your newspaper. That’s all I know. Now, I’m getting out of here. Have fun burning alongside the Brits, Bisset.” She taps her wand against the side of her thigh and sets off at a run. Tracking her movement, Harry realizes she’s bound for the Black Lake; he can see the tip of the Durmstrang boat’s mast just beyond the walls of Hogwarts.

Harry hands the newspaper over to Geoff as Peryle, Luna, and Calcifer make their way across the arena toward them. “Omar, we’re going to need more information. Tell us about the task – you said something about the Minister?”

Omar takes a wary step back. “Look, kid, I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t –”

“Just tell us what happened. I – we need to find Tom.” Harry’s voice breaks. “Please?”

“He and Minister Dumbledore took a Portkey away from here. I would have thought they were going to somewhere to give Riddle his winnings, just quickly to get it out of the way, except…”

“ _Except_?”

He hears agitated muttering from behind him – it seems the others have started passing around the newspaper.

“The activation phrase for the Portkey was ‘to the Atrium’,” Omar says. “That, ah, that didn’t sound right for what I expected.”

Harry lets out a low hiss. “I suppose that makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Calcifer comes up from behind him. “What makes sense?”

“They’ve taken Tom to the Ministry. I… I had hoped never to have to go back to the Department of Mysteries.”

“The Department of Mysteries?” Calcifer stares. “Wait, what do you mean, _go back_?”

“You already know what a _freak_ I am.” Harry closes his lying eyes and aches with longing for Tom. “Why is this a surprise?”

“Did they run tests on you?”

Harry shrugs. “I’m a temporal anomaly. Of course they – oh, never mind that, now. They have Tom.”

“Didn’t… didn’t we _want_ them to take him?” Calcifer asks. “How else is he meant to duel Dumbledore?”

“ _That_ changes things.” Harry indicates the newspaper in Luna’s hands.

Calcifer exchanges a loaded look with Peryle.

Harry stuffs his hands in his pockets. “It means we have to kill Dumbledore _now_ , before he exposes magic. Tom’s going to need help.”

At that, they smile. He’s trained them well.

***

Dumbledore opens the door, and for a long moment Tom’s not sure what he’s looking at. The space beyond is enormous, dwarfing row upon row of square pedestals that line the room and surround a light as blinding as a fragment of the sun.

Tom walks inside without needing to be prompted, pulled forth like a fish on a hook. His heart feels warm in his chest, vibrating at a frequency just on the verge of discomfort.

He finds himself on a platform slightly elevated from the rest of the room. From here he can make out the cavernous ceiling – the room is circular, the pedestals arranged concentrically about the center like the rings of a bisected tree. The lamp in the middle casts strange, shifting shadows onto the walls. Out of the corners of Tom’s eyes they take on a more concrete form: something between men and wolves. A handful of Unspeakables wander the rows, wearing horribly familiar cobalt hoods over their heads.

With a sense of inevitability, Tom turns his attention to the sources of the twisted shadows. Upon the pedestals are hunks of warped wood, pale and raggedy in the stark light. They stretch out limbs tipped with oil-slick silver toward the light, roots cracking the marble of their plinths. They _sing_.

Tom’s knees nearly give out, but he catches himself against the railing of the platform.

The song is as familiar as the church organ from the orphanage, as the texture of schoolbooks, as the dark of his and Harry’s room in the dungeons. But there’s a distorted quality to it – a melody without rhythm, an untuned orchestra.

Bile rises in his throat. This is _wrong_.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Dumbledore says from behind. “We harvested them from all over the isles. We’ve now spent almost a year trying to determine how to use them – they don’t respond to any stimulus but the light.”

“You can’t hear them?”

Dumbledore smiles hollowly. “That’s where you come in, Tom.”

“I…” Words tangle in his throat, muddied by the discord of the trees. Their music sounds less like woodwinds and more like screams.

“According to the literature, ancient oaks are analogous to extremely powerful artifacts such as the Goblet of Fire,” Dumbledore says. “After centuries of blood worship, their souls are strong, and alien… and it is said that they can rise as warriors to defend wizardkind. We need you to speak with them. We need to persuade them our cause is worthy. They have proved… _unresponsive_ to our prior demands.”

“You don’t understand what you’ve done,” Tom rasps. “This is all wrong… their minds are broken.”

“We keep them fed a steady drip of blood, and the Ministry is a magically rich area. All their needs are well-cared for, I assure you.”

Tom spits on the ground.

“Plants are extraordinarily resilient organisms, Tom.” The Minister moves closer, smiling with grandfatherly fondness. “I know you’re something of a prodigy in Herbology. We’ve simply moved the _important_ parts of the trees from the woods into a more accessible location.”

There are three Unspeakables in the room, plus Dumbledore. Tom can’t fight them all at once, especially with this awful nausea that has come to rest in his gut. “You’re either mad or stupid,” he says coldly. “And I will not become another servant to your war.”

***

“We need to get to a fireplace,” Harry says, striding off towards the castle. “Unless one of you is hiding some truly impressive long-distance Apparition abilities…? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Right, let’s get moving –”

“Wait.” Calcifer strides forward and catches him by the elbow. “Harry, shouldn’t we alert the Muggles somehow? They’re just sitting, defenseless…”

It’s a strange sentiment to hear from a pureblood. “They’re hardly defenseless,” Harry points out. “I think your boyfriend is going to be fine. He’s not exactly going to be fighting on the frontlines.”

“Wait, Harry, that is not a bad idea,” Peryle cuts in. “Calcifer, you have a sort of communications device, correct?”

Calcifer pats the bag over his shoulder. “I thought I’d bring the magical telephone from the Room of Requirement, just in case.”

“We can send word to Justin,” says Peryle.

Harry grunts in surprise. “Justin? He betrayed us.”

“Exactly. Wherever he is right now, he is near the enemy.”

“His number…?”

Calcifer sits down in the grass, fiddling with the enchanted telephone. “We don’t need a number.”

“Wait.” Harry drops down next to him, examining the device. “What? Why wouldn’t we need a number.”

“It’s changed over the last few months, ever since I forgot Will’s.” Calcifer holds the receiver up against the side of his face, frowning in concentration. “Watch – uh, dial Justin Finch-Fletchley.” He holds the phone out before himself so all five of them can here the tinny ring as it tries to connect.

Luna sits right next to Harry, eyes intent as concentrated moonbeams. Geoff crouches on the other side, next to a kneeling Peryle.

Omar has gone. They sit alone in the field as dawn light breaks over the Forest, hearing only the sound of the wind and the rattle of the strange analog phone.

“Hello?” the phone says after the first three rings. Harry almost doesn’t recognize Justin’s voice. He sounds exhausted. “Who is this? How did you get this number?”

Everyone looks to Harry. He extends his hand for the phone and tucks it against his ear, feeling the cold plastic vibrate with Justin’s speech.

“Mum? I _told_ you, this really isn’t the best way to contact me. I’m working on the –” he cuts off abruptly. “Mother…? Is this you?”

“This is Harry Potter,” Harry says, making an effort to keep his tone friendly.

“Oh – oh _fuck_.” There’s a brief scrabble, the sound of footsteps.

“You can hang up if you like,” Harry says. “On your own head be it.”

He hears the sound of a door clicking decisively shut. “I wasn’t gonna hang up – I’ve moved somewhere where this won’t be obvious.”

“Then why are you still whispering?”

“Look, I don’t know – what is this about, Harry? I – it’s good to hear your voice. Honestly.”

It’s probably been months since Justin’s had contact with another magical. Harry can empathize. Still, he hasn’t forgiven Justin’s betrayal at Hogsmeade. “I can’t say I’m glad to hear yours.”

“Yeah, all right. I deserved that.”

“Listen, Justin… I just – everything’s going wrong. You need to be ready.”

Justin laughs nervously. “You always were the ominous type, huh?”

Harry laughs shallowly. “Yeah. I suppose that’s true.”

“What’s gone wrong? I probably can’t help you, but –”

“We’re not the ones who need help. The Ministry’s planning an attack – soon. Very soon.”

“An atta – what? I – _where_?”

“I dunno. London, probably?”

Justin exhales. “We’ll be fine, then.”

“No, you won’t! None of us will be!”

Geoff grabs Harry’s hand and squeezes, helping bring him back to equilibrium.

“Justin, they’re planning to drag this war out of the shadows. No more battles out of public view, no more quiet disappearances, no more posturing and secrecy. Just flat-out combat. And Dumbledore is a very clever man. He will not lose this battle, no matter… no matter what he needs to sacrifice.”

“You think I don’t know that? We’ve been waiting for _months_ for a counterstrike.”

“Where are you, if not London?”

“C’mon, Harry. I’m not telling you that.”

“What are they doing with the vanished wizards?”

Another rustling.

“Justin, don’t you dare –”

“I thought I could hang up if I liked.”

Harry hisses in irritation.

“Thanks for the call, Harry, but we’re on opposite sides of the war, now. Talking like this isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

“Look, I don’t know what’s happening over there, but you have to know it’s wrong… stealing people away from their homes? _Using_ them for their magic like – like rats in a cage?”

“You have no idea what we’re even – what does it matter, anyway? Everyone says that anti-Muggle bigotry was practically eliminated by the time we got to Hogwarts, but it was always festering just below the surface. Sure, wizarding kids liked to play with electrical gadgets, but they’d never _dream_ of walking through Muggle London, rubbing elbows with ‘my kind’. Six years in Slytherin, and never once did anyone ask me to visit over the summer.”

Harry cups his hand over the receiver and bites his lip.

“Wizarding society is rotten. With these new technologies, conflict was inevitable – and I knew, if push came to shove, that the Ministry would never allow for peaceful coexistence. If we didn’t spend the time we have now on research, we’d be doomed. How can you claim we aren’t just?”

“I’m not going to argue morality with you,” Harry says. “But… we think there’s another way. We’re going to try and change things. Take out Dumbledore, withdraw wizards from the cities… if the attack today never comes, know that we succeeded.”

“I… how?”

“Tom,” Harry says. “He’s at the Ministry now. He’s going to try to kill Dumbledore in a duel.”

“D’you – do you think he can pull it off?”

“I think he can do just about anything he sets his mind to,” Harry says frankly. “If he does, uh… we’ll have a place for you. In the Forest.”

“I –”

“You don’t have to decide now, but we’ll give you lenience – give you a home where you can practice magic without being a _freak_ – if you manage to free the wizards in custody.”

After a long moment of silence, Justin murmurs, “thank you.”

Harry hangs up, not wanting to say anything that could jeopardize the moment.

The others stare at the telephone, united in contemplation.

“Right.” Harry claps once, then pushes himself to his feet. “That could have gone a lot worse. Now, we have a job to do.”

***

“Oh, Tom.” Dumbledore’s beard looks thin in the harsh light of the oak’s room. “My boy, this is not just _my_ war. This is a war centuries in the making. None of us wants to fight, but you’re an adult now. Sometimes adults have to make difficult decisions.”

“You can’t lie to me,” Tom rasps, throat aching with bile. “You want this war more than anyone.”

“Perhaps.”

“What? You’re not even going to try and deny it?”

The old man shrugs and leans his creaking frame against the railing. “I know I can trust you, Tom. After all, you’ve felt it too – you must have. All those years in the orphanage, knowing you were special, but kept in line by an arbitrary, useless set of laws. It _rankles_ , doesn’t it? To have power, and to have that power kept in chains? To be restrained by people so much _weaker_ than you?”

There’s a frailty to the Minister. Harry’s wand sings softly in Tom’s fist. “Yes. I’ve felt it.”

“No more,” Dumbledore turns to face Tom, eyes flat, face lined in feigned joy. “In the world I create, our people will no longer have to hide our capabilities. Just think of the things we could do with magic, if only we could work out in the open.”

Tom aches with the truth of those words. He’s thought the same thing a thousand times over, and to hear them come so nakedly from the mouth of his old mentor makes some dark piece of himself exult. “But the cost…”

“Any cost will be repaid a thousandfold by the new world I will create – the world _we_ will create, Tom.”

 _There is no good or evil_.

“Just speak with the trees. They will follow your lead.”

And yet – _War leaves scars on a people. A world forged in blood will always bear that stain_.

A wrinkled hand descends onto his shoulder. “It’s time, Tom.”

The hearts of the oaks, lumpish and warped, seem rendered sicklier still in the stark lighting. Their shadows circle like carrion birds.

 _You are the bravest person I know_.

“No,” Tom says, feeling free as the words ebb out of him. “No, I… I won’t do it.” He has a higher purpose in this new world.

He whirls in place, Harry’s wand in hand, lips twisted in an incantation –

“ _Imperio_ ,” says the Minister, and all thought flees Tom’s mind.


	36. Pyrophyte Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end beckons.

Harry steps out of swirling viridian flames onto shaking ground. The Atrium trembles like a leaf in the wind, like the death throes of some grand, unseen beast.

“Woah,” Geoff says, stepping out of the fire on his heels. “What’s going on? Where is everyone?”

“We need to get down to the Department of Mysteries,” Harry says. “That must be where they’ve taken Tom.”

“Oh! Is this an earthquake? Were we expecting one of those?” Luna blinks, swiveling to take in their surroundings. She, Peryle, and Calcifer have all emerged safely from the Floo.

“No,” Harry says grimly. “Something’s wrong.”

A short, expectant beep sounds out. It ricochets about the enormous, empty room, setting Harry’s teeth on edge. “ _Protocol alpha is a go_ ,” says a flat female voice, unnaturally amplified. “ _Squads Starfire and Gallistrix, advance to ready positions_.”

“The fuck was that supposed to be?” Calcifer dusts ashes off his robes, looking twitchy and scared. He’s never been good at keeping up the snobby aristocrat mask under pressure.

“I don’t know.” Harry strides forward, heedless of the pitching ground. “But I don’t like the sound of it.”

He makes for the lift at the far end of the room, trusting the others to follow, but before he gets far the doors open of their own volition. Out pour a stream of wizards in sweeping cobalt robes and masks.

Between alarm and the unsteady ground, Harry nearly falls over – Geoff, running up behind him, steadies him and taps him on the head with his wand, Disillusioning them both.

“Thanks.” Harry grips him by his invisible wrist and glances around, checking that everyone is hidden.

“Where are they going?” Geoff whispers, letting Harry drag him away into a shadowy corner of the Atrium.

“I…” Harry watches as the figures cross the room and pass into reception. The masks are truly frightening: they cover the top halves of their faces, leaving the eyes shadowed and eerie, then curve helmetlike over the skulls and taper into imitations of horns. “They’re going up into the city. They’re going to _London_.”

Geoff, unseen, nestles closer to his side.

“We need to move faster,” Harry says. “These tremors – I don’t know what they are, but they can’t be good…”

“Harry,” Peryle says warningly, just loud enough not to echo – “Harry, your –”

Harry looks up to see a pair of cobalt-robed figures without masks walking in the wake of the soldiers. The silver banding on their sleeves marks them as commanders; the first one’s tiger-bright spray of hair marks her as –

“ _Mum_ ,” Geoff breathes. “Harry, that’s – _Mum_!”

Harry, paralyzed by realization, is too late to grab Geoff. At his shout, the two leaders turn to see him, and Geoff’s Disillusionment flakes away under their scrutiny.

Geoffrey races across the room towards his mother, shoulders hunched apologetically.

“Fuck,” Harry mutters, retreating further into the shadows and hoping desperately that his own Disillusionment has held.

Lily’s companion, a man with the hungry wildness of a caged lion, makes eye contact with him. “C’mon out then, boy. Join your brother. We don’t mean you any harm.”

He hasn’t seen the other three, at least. Thank goodness. Harry walks out of the shadows, keeping his spine straight and his eyes forward.

“Mum, we have to stop this,” Geoffrey is saying, gripping his mother’s sleeve. “It’s wrong. Harry has a plan to make things different – you gotta help!”

The thunderous rolling of the ground subsides into a low hum.

“I have a job to do, love,” Lily says, pushing back Geoff’s bangs to kiss him on the forehead. Her eyes, though, are on Harry. “I’m so glad that you two have come back, but if you want to help you’re going to have to go to floor five. They’ll be able to outfit you there and get you combat-ready… but I’d rather you didn’t have to fight. That’s why I’m doing this.”

“We’re not here to fight,” Geoff says determinedly. “We’re here to _stop_ the fighting!”

Lily’s green eyes narrow. “That’s very noble,” she says softly. “But it’s not your place, dear. If we go through with this, no one will have to ever fight again. This is the first true battle of the last war.”

Harry returns her stare, feeling ice pool inside him. “You took Tom,” he says hollowly. “Where _is_ he?”

“I expect he’s with the oaks,” Lily says calmly. “You should be proud, Harry. Tom is playing a vital role.”

“You really want this?” Harry asks. “I mean – you know the Muggle world. You know it doesn’t deserve destruction.”

Lily glances briefly at the yellow-eyed man. “We aren’t going to destroy it. It will be simply… reshaped, but into a form better befitting the balance between our two people.”

“Your family,” Harry protests. “Your _sister_.”

Lily scoffs. “Harry, I cut ties with Petunia almost three years ago. It was _you_ who helped me see how twisted she has become. No, I have no kinship with Muggles.”

Geoff drops her sleeve, looking horrified, but Harry feels a surprising wash of pity. There’s a kernel of truth to Lily’s words, but it’s clear she’s scared. She _doesn’t_ want this. “I’m going up to floor five,” Harry lies. “If Tom’s fighting, so will I.”

The man laughs wheezingly. “There’s a good lad. Albus _did_ say your kids would come around eventually, Lily.” To Harry, he says, “do well and I’ll vouch for you. I’m not a fan of runaways, but according to the Minister there were extenuating circumstances.”

Harry tries to smile. “C’mon, Geoff.”

Lily catches his eyes again. She mouths ‘ _what are you playing at?_ ’

He shrugs.

“We need to get moving,” says the man. “See you kids on the other side. Don’t try any funny business.”

Geoff steps away from his mother, and the two adults pull away in the direction of their squads. Each places a mask over their faces.

Their backs are very exposed.

“Give me your wand,” Harry says urgently.

“What?”

The ground begins to quake violently. “ _Asphodel squad, advance_ ,” says that same metallic voice.

“Your wand.”

Geoff hands it over.

Harry turns the length of woods between his fingers, hesitating for just another moment, then breathes in sharply and aims it at his mother’s back.

***

Tom’s limbs go limp and lazy under the influence of the Imperius curse.

“I was hoping that wouldn’t be necessary,” Dumbledore says as if from a great distance. “Ah, well.” He clucks in the manner of the fanciful professor Tom had once idolized. “You never did have the knack for Occlumency, did you?”

_Climb down to the main level_ , a voice murmurs in his head. Tom obeys. Around him sprawl the dozens of oak heartwoods, singing their twisted, beatless melody. The shadows on the walls twitch, dreamlike. _Now go toward the light_.

Tom drifts toward the lantern at the center of the room. With every step, he grows more content. Something silvery and sharp-edged bellows within him, but it’s growing weaker by the moment.

The lantern is painfully bright, drilling lances into his eyes. Is it pulsing, or is that just his imagination?

_Close your eyes_ , the voice says. _There’s no point in hurting yourself_.

Tom shuts his eyes and the world fades to livid red.

_Good. Now, climb up – there are stairs around the light_.

He finds the steps and climbs blindly up, clinging to a thin metal railing. The stairway curves, spiraling around the lantern and up to what feels like a solid platform. As Tom ascends, the light pressing on his eyelids cuts off.

_You may open your eyes and take a seat_.

Tom finds himself high above the trees, their shadows bleeding away from him. In the center of the platform rests a narrow metal stool. He sits. He must be perched directly above the lantern, now.

_Listen_.

Tom listens. Each tree sings their own version of the same familiar tune, but subtly _wrong_ – they can’t hear each other. They’re singing deafly into the void, and the result is as discordant and beautiful as a train’s mournful call, as a chorus of startled doves.

_Sing_.

He does. The trees tremble at the sound. The world begins to shake.

The voice in his head says nothing more, but Tom feels its triumph as his own.

***

Geoff cries out in shock as his mother falls to Harry’s spell.

“She and her friend are high up in the command structure,” Harry says. “If we remove them, we disrupt their military efforts.” With some effort – Geoff’s wand doesn’t seem to like him much – he carves out a slab of marble from the floor and drags the two adults into it. “ _Accio_ , Lily’s wand.” Surprisingly, the wand responds to the Summoning. It feels warm in his fingers. Ready for the fight.

“ _Harry_ ,” Geoff squeaks, dashing forward as the floor closes over his mother.

“I left breathing holes,” Harry points out, handing him his wand back. “C’mon, then. We don’t have much time.”

“I…”

Harry races back for the lift, but pauses, staring up at the indicator of the platform’s current location.

Floor five, floor four, floor three…

He sucks in a breath and presses himself against the wall, casting a quick Disillusionment.

“What’s going on?” Luna’s voice whispers in his ear.

Harry jumps. The others must all be close by, then. That’s reassuring. “More reinforcements coming.”

The lift doors open with a _ding_ and yield another squadron of cobalt figures.

Geoff, thankfully, is nowhere to be seen. He must have been able to recast his invisibility.

Harry shakes off the spell as soon as the soldiers round the corner: he would rather that the others can see him and receive orders than to maintain the security of invisibility. “Are we all ready? Sound off, everyone.”

“Ready,” Luna says immediately.

Peryle hums in assent.

“What are we waiting for?” asks Calcifer.

“Geoff? Are you going to be all right?” Harry hesitates. “I… if you want to head up to the fifth floor, you should. You’ll be safer there if something goes wrong.”

Geoff emerges from his invisibility like a fish jumping through the reflective surface of a pond. His arms curl protectively over his chest. “No, I –” the floor bucks wildly, and Geoff’s face goes sharp with resolve. “I need to help Tom. I’m with you, Harry. Always.”

“Thank you,” Harry says softly, then turns toward the empty lift. “Now, let’s –”

The cold marble floor of the Atrium splits down the middle.

***

The oaks tremble with the force of Tom’s song. Their discordant melody slowly resolves into a whole, as though he is a conductor and they his orchestra. Branches grow towards him. The thing operating his heart swells painfully, until he feels like it might crack apart his rib cage.

Millenia of power are stored in this room, all vibrating at Tom’s will. How strange – shouldn’t this absolute power fill him with euphoria? But no… there’s a curious fog over his emotions, stifling him into soft, vapid contentment.

_Tell them to rise. Tell them to fight!_

Somehow, Tom knows the tune to sing. He opens his mouth and lets out the high phoenix-song of battle fall from his tongue. It dances, high and sweet, upon the still air of the vast chamber.

The oaks know the music as well as he does. They creak with it, and their shadows leap into a monstrous frenzy on the walls.

He stands from the stool, and, impossibly, they stand as well, growing from sickly lumps to trees of over eight feet tall – no leaves, bark the silver of spilled gasoline, gnarled and swirling with eldritch geometries. When he looks straight at them, they appear for all the world like sun-starved plants, but out of the corners of his eyes… well. Tom has never known a person to be quite so tall, quite so twisted, quite so _watchful_ , but nevertheless it is people which he sees in his peripheral vision.

Over four dozen ancient, unknowable soldiers, humming in terrible counterpoint to the song still dragging itself inexorably up his throat. The snarl of oakwood around Tom’s heart pulses in time to the melody. With each beat it seems to stretch, climbing higher up his body, its roots delving deeper into his numb flesh. He couldn’t scream if he wanted to.

He doesn’t want to scream. Finally, some emotion has pierced the fog over his mind: not pain, or fear, but _bloodthirst_. The trees are hungry.

They look upwards, mouthless faces stretching towards the stone that is their sky. Tom looks up with them, and watches as the ceiling rends in two.

_Now, up_ , instructs the voice in his head, raw with delight. _Up!_

***

Harry grabs Geoff by the back of his shirt and hauls him bodily away from the crack. Impossible, shifting forms pull themselves up from the bowels of the Ministry, spiraling toward the heavens in an every-color cascade of too-smooth bark and grasping not-fingers.

Geoff vomits. Harry tastes bile, but he’s too frozen to spit it out – those are the oaks. Those are _his oaks_ , undead and warped and terrible. Their song spills with them out of the earth, bone-shaking in its intensity, mournful and frenetic all at once.

He can’t breathe – he can’t – the air is so thick with magic that’s he’s afraid he’ll choke on it, so bright with monstrous melody that he can’t _think_ –

And then he sees Tom amidst the trees, borne along with them like a king on a throne, the wood of his heart winding over his neck and head like a twisted laurel crown. His voice rings clear and sharp through it all, a battle-trumpet cutting through the din of coming butchery.

“ _Tom_ ,” Harry tries to scream, but he can’t hear his own voice.

The shifting, formless army marches away toward the outside world. When Harry blinks, he sees an afterimage of orderly soldiers, but with his eyes open the trees are a solid mass of twisting shapes, sometimes organic, sometimes nearly crystalline with harsh geometry.

Tom moves away with them, sitting primly, face blank and calm as the wordless melody drips clean and sharp from his lips.

Something has gone terribly awry. Harry feels the wrongness from the soles of his feet to his temples, feels it reverberating through the bones in his face and Lily’s stolen wand.

From the rip in the flooring rises a great pillar of shining white marble. Upon it stands the Minister, resplendent in deep navy, beard flowing like mist from his face. Behind his half-moon glasses, his eyes are coals of smoldering red.

His ancient, knobbed wand is fixed unerringly on Tom’s back, face set in concentration. As the old man steps off the pillar and onto the ground, he moves his wand slightly, and the tone of the music changes. He is in command here. Utterly in control. Harry feels a cold chill tear through him. That expression on Tom’s face – _he recognizes that expression_. For all his treachery, Barty Crouch Jr. had taught the students of Hogwarts to recognize the work of an Unforgivable curse.

Harry masters his trembling limbs and casts off his nausea. Geoffrey and Luna are right next to him – Geoff has closed his eyes and placed his hands over his ears, while Luna seems unable to look away from the regiment of trees. Calcifer and Peryle stand near the lift, farther from the hole in the floor, and cling to one another with an aching desperation.

“ _Kill the Minister_ ,” he mouths, gesturing for them to fall into a combat formation. They obey with gratifying speed, rushing as one for Dumbledore’s retreating back, wands alight with uncast spells, stepping in time to the twisted battle-melody of the oaks.

Peryle gallops out in front, pausing so Harry can pull himself seamlessly onto her back. He throws an arm around her to steady himself, then begins sending a barrage of vicious spells over her shoulder towards the old man.

This is a maneuver they’ve practiced time and time again: Harry poses a magical threat, Peryle a physical one. If their enemy focuses on one and not the other –

Dumbledore whirls, his monstrous red eyes piercing their Disillusionments like flame through tissue paper. His wand whips up to pluck Harry’s spells right out of the air, flinging them sizzling to the floor. In the same motion, he summons a wall of that same ivory marble and sends it slamming toward them.

Peryle screams and throws up a massive shield. The wall keeps coming, sending cracks running through the thick layer of protective magic. Harry glances behind them, desperate, but there’s nowhere to run – _except for the lift_.

“ _Run!_ ” he bellows. They still can’t hear him, but the others see his gesturing and turn tail. Peryle looks over her shoulder at him and nods, every muscle in her neck straining as she tries to maintain her failing shield.

Harry throws up a shield of his own in the moment after hers collapses. “ _Go! I’ll try my best to keep it up!_ ”

Seeming to understand, she turns and gallops for the door to the lift. He continues casting over his shoulder, pouring all the magic he can into the spell. He doesn’t have a hope of undoing one of Dumbledore’s conjurations on his own – Tom could probably manage it, but Harry himself has never been the strongest in transfigurations.

Moments before they reach the lift shaft, the doors pop open to reveal another contingent of cobalt-hooded soldiers. Some scream at the sight of the five rebels, one of whom is a charging centaur – or maybe the sweeping wave of marble has startled them.

Harry leaps off Peryle’s back just as the wall of marble slams home with a dust-shaking groan, sealing them inside the lift. The last echoes of the dread-song go abruptly silent.

“What in Merlin’s name –” A Ministry worker throws off his hood to reveal a stern face and a truly impressive beard. “What do you children think you’re doing? I – _Calcifer Lestrange_? My dear boy, what is going on?”

The lift seems to have been enchanted to fit any number of occupants, but the charms strain under the burden of holding over two dozen wizards. Still, the soldiers have backed away to leave a ring of bare ground around Harry and his friends.

Calcifer leans against the carved wood of the wall, eyes dark and haunted, clothing askew. Very slowly and deliberately, he pulls himself up to his not-inconsiderable height and fixes the man with a stare. “We are saving our world. Please do us the courtesy of staying out of our way.”

“Wait a second,” says a younger voice from the back of the crowd. “Aren’t you the kids who ran away to the woods? Why should we listen to you?”

Harry and Peryle exchange a glance. “Are any of you trained in battle?” he asks.

An uneasy silence follows. “I completed the recommended one-month combat module,” one pipes up. Around half the group nods along.

“Then I won’t feel as bad about doing this,” he says, dropping to the floor and placing his palm against the wooden bottom of the lift carriage. The floorboards hum with the battle-song of the oaks, pliant and ready to aid in their fight. Under his touch, they turn to smoke and send the cobalt-hooded figures tumbling down the shaft into darkness.

The others leap away from the edge. “Shit,” hisses Geoff. “ _Harry_. What the –”

“At least one of them will cast a cushioning charm,” he murmurs, squashing down his guilt. “Come on. We need to get to Tom. Dumbledore’s got him under the _Imperius_. If we snap him out of it, though –”

“Then _we’ll_ be the ones with the army,” Luna finishes, eyes widening.

“Exactly.” Harry pushes through them and presses his hand against the cold marble separating them from the Atrium. “Who here is best at transfiguration?”

Luna and Calcifer exchange assessing stares. “Luna,” Calcifer decides after a few seconds.

“Try to be quick,” Harry says as Luna steps up to the marble. “At some point those soldiers are going to find a way to get to climb up and fight us properly. I’d rather be long gone by then.”

Luna hums in acknowledgement, sticking out her tongue with concentration as she probes the barrier.

He strains his ears, trying to make out any noise from down below. It’s hard to tell what might be the cobalt-hoods, and what might just be the creaking bones of the Ministry itself.

“Got it,” Luna says, pushing her hand forward. “And… _there_ we go.” With a rush of wind, a tunnel appears through the marble.

Harry rushes though at the rear, letting his hand drag across the walls of stone. Engraved there are tiny flowers, tugging at the skin of his fingertips and reminding him of another lifetime, of floral images etched into the walls of an ice castle.

They emerge into an Atrium made whole once again. There’s no sign of the crack in the floor – no sign of the Minister, or the army of trees, or Tom Riddle.

Peryle holds out her hand for him. “We’ll see you outside,” she says to the others.

Harry grasps her hand and settles onto her back, holding her clothed waist. “Ready,” he says softly.

As soon as he says it, she bolts down the room, hoof strikes echoing through the empty Atrium. He clutches tightly to his mother’s wand, trying not to look at the blackened leaves that litter the ground.

There’s a hole in the ceiling of reception. Through it comes slanted beams of sunlight, the drowsy heat of an early summer morning.

“Cast a Feather-light charm on me,” Peryle says. “I plan to jump.”

He does, and they soar up into the light and clatter onto hard pavement – into the middle of a pitched battle.

The cobalt figures are fighting desperately against a hidden enemy. Muggles, Harry thinks at first, but no – whoever they’re facing is using magic. A tornado screams down the road, lifting and tossing wizards with terrifying ease. A fallen chunk of masonry transforms into a winged lion and buries its claws in the chest of a Ministry worker, spilling her guts across the stone. A stream of indigo fire leaps from enemy to enemy with effortless grace, leaving smoldering wrecks in its wake.

“Harry!” someone calls from the second floor of a nearby building. A spell comes crashing toward her and she yelps, throwing up a shield.

“Pansy?” He looks around and recognizes more of their friends dodging through alleyways and lurking in the shadows. The entirety of the contingent he’d sent along to the Ministry, he realizes. _Obviously_. In his worry over Tom, he’d completely forgotten the plan. He curses himself. Some leader he makes, not remembering where he’d stationed his troops…

“Thank goodness!” she calls. “We’re swamped here trying to hold them off – we couldn’t do anything about…”

“The trees,” Harry says grimly, straining his ears for a strain of sickly music. “They _Imperio_ ’d Tom.” He neatly sidesteps a stray curse from a cobalt-hood. “Where’d he go?”

Pansy leans out of the window and points down the road, and Harry finally realizes where they are. Down the street, the buildings fall away in favor of flat grass and cultivated trees. He’s not familiar with London parks, but –

“Hyde Park,” Calcifer says from his side. Harry’s been wasting time, if the other three have managed to catch up to him and Peryle. “They’re trying to stage a fight there…”

“I guess it’s a good sign that they’re trying to minimize civilian casualties,” Geoff says uncertainly.

“Sure,” Harry says. “Did you check on Lily?”

“Her arm got banged up a bit, but other than that… well, she was okay. Scrimgeour wasn’t.”

Harry says nothing. He can hear the high notes of the oak’s song, ringing through him like his very veins are the strings of an immense violin.

“We did the right thing,” Geoff says, but he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than anyone else.

Harry fists his hands in Peryle’s shirt and leans against her back.

“You sure?” she whispers in response to the wordless signal. “The others… they deserve to fight, too.”

She’s right. Charging off on his own – well, that’s the sort of behavior that got Henry killed. “Fine,” he whispers back. “Uh – you might want to cover your ears… _Sonorus_.” His next words come out magically amplified. “Anyone who can, come with us to the park. That’s – that’s where the real battle will take place.” He ends the spell with a grimace. He feels far too unbalanced and anxious for a proper speech – he can’t tear his mind away from that brief glimpse of Tom’s impassive face.

A trio of brooms takes to the air. Harry thinks he recognizes Daphne among them, her bright hair catching sunlight like the still surface of a lake.

“Now I’m ready,” he tells Peryle.

“Hold on tight.”

“I am – ahh!” Harry crosses his arms over her ribs, shocked by the sudden acceleration. Clearly, she had been holding back while they were underground – _this_ is a gallop.

They speed along the road toward the Muggle park, passing dozens of wrecked cars. Though he keeps a careful eye out for corpses, the roadway seems empty of civilians. He does see people, though – not out on the street, but watching through the windows with wide, awed eyes.

Not all Muggles are like the Dursleys. Hell, Harry remembers how he himself had reacted when he first learned about the magical world: even in the midst of battle, he can’t imagine not feeling pure wonder in the face of that kind of revelation.

After so long feeling terrified of breaking the Statute of Secrecy, it’s strangely liberating to practice magic on the streets of London.

The regiment of trees stands in the center of a field of fresh grass, somehow standing perfectly still and yet giving the impression of growth. Dumbledore stands at their head, hands folded behind his back, watching the sky. _What are they waiting for_?

Peryle charges forward with still greater speed, straining and leaping down the pavement. Overhead, their friends wheel like birds of prey on the back of their broomsticks, their movements jerky and anxious. The morning sun falls thick and gold on the backs of Harry’s hands, offering some small comfort against his aching terror.

Dumbledore turns to face them, his face alight with a welcoming smile. “It’s time to stand down,” he says, voice somehow carrying across the distance between them and cutting through the rush of wind in Harry’s ears. “I have no interest in shedding magical blood today.”

Peryle’s hooves thud onto grass. Harry raises his wand, narrowing his eyes against wind and sunlight.

“Very well,” the old man says. The song of the oaks reaches a crescendo. “I’ll make this quick.” With a sweep of his long, bulbous wand, a swathe of lawn clippings flies free of the ground and morphs into a swarm of arrow-sharp sparrows.

As one, Harry and Peryle throw up _Protego_ s, but the shields are almost immediately shattered under the onslaught.

Peryle wheels away, trying to turn. Harry does his best to hold on with one hand while casting flames with the other, hoping to burn the birds out of the sky.

One flies past them, cutting a long gash across Peryle’s flank and clipping Harry’s thigh – they’re made of metal, with feathers like knives and beaks like heart-seeking needles.

Fire won’t do anything against the birds, in that case, but they’re too strong for shields to hold off for long. From above, someone screams.

Cold rage spreads through Harry, finally calming his thoughts. He never thinks so clearly as times like this, locked in battle against impossible odds, all his usual anxieties crushed under the weight of a more immediate, thrilling fear.

He drops from Peryle’s back and rolls, wanting to give her more room to maneuver. “ _Aguamenti_ ,” he casts, pouring as much power as he can into the spell. A lake’s worth of water expands from the tip of his wand, trapping the birds around him, and he turns it to ice. They drop, powerless – but there’s no time to waste on celebrating small victories.

Harry flings himself across the green towards Dumbledore, feeling the song of the woods catch in his lungs and _pull_. Lily’s wand burns with discontentment in his hand. Harry’s helpless to do anything but duck as the old man sends spell after spell upwards, targeting the people he has come to see as his family.

Still, they’re doing a good job at distracting Dumbledore. The old man’s face turns, scanning across the grass, but his focus is on the sky.

Harry throws up the sturdiest Disillusionment he can muster, infusing it with all the safety and mystique of his old Cloak, and runs. He’s close enough that the song of the oaks feels like a physical presence, stronger even than he remembers from the height of their power back in the Forest.

Dumbledore’s eyes, red as winter cardinals, are still locked on the sky. Harry can see them in all their unnatural color – he’s close now, mere feet away, and still utterly unperceived.

“ _Force be with you_ ,” he murmurs under the roaring crescendo of the trees. A blade of molten plasma erupts from the end of Lily’s wand and lands, sizzling, in the Minister’s gut.

***

Tom’s mind returns to him with a crashing suddenness. For a moment, it’s all too much: the discordant beauty of the music, the shock of finding himself out under the sky, the soft, crackling pain in his heart. He tries to turn his head, but finds his neck stiff and unyielding, as if he’s wearing a high collar.

He reaches up, trancelike, and touches it. _Wood_. How… how strange.

He’s still singing. He doesn’t think he could stop even if he wanted to. But why would he want to stop singing? The thought of dropping out of the melody for even an instant _hurts_.

From somewhere far away, Tom hears shouting. A fitting counterpoint to the battle-song. Still, it seems wrong that he and his army should remain in wait, not when there’s combat elsewhere. Should they not join the fight? Bleed the enemy dry, and let their sweet corpse-flesh propel their growth to still greater heights?

The trees shift around him, casting spiraling patches of shade across the backs of his hands. Tom hums, watching the shadows trace the shattered-mirror tracks of scar tissue across his right hand.

Something about those screams seems so familiar – and the light casting those shadows comes not from the sun, but – “ _Tom_ ,” someone calls. It’s his name, and no one else’s – not his father’s, not common. _His_. In that familiar voice, he finds himself.

Tom yells, ululating, and the sound integrates perfectly with the music.

There is a fire burning in the world beyond the grove, a white-hot blaze of leaping forms, all teeth and claws and hellish glee.

The boy he loves is calling out in terror, in pain, and Tom knows with the certainty of the Forest that he has the power to save him.

He lunges, moving with his own limbs and the snaking branches of the Forest at once, seeing through half-human eyes and tasting the ground through roots of magic and wood. At the speed of thought, he comes to stand at the forefront of the army-that-is-him, facing a wall of energy the likes of which no textbook could have prepared him for.

Fiendfyre isn’t meant to be sun-white. It isn’t meant to burn this high without anything to fuel it. It isn’t meant to have a song of its own, frenetic and fluting.

Perhaps this isn’t Fiendfyre, then, but something more powerful still. In the center of the maelstrom stands a tall figure bleached black by the intensity of the flames, head thrown back, wand held high above his head.

His other hand holds up a smaller person, struggling against him. For a moment, Tom thinks the Minister is trying to bring them close to him, but he sees that it’s much the opposite – the smaller individual is clawing, thrashing, while the old man tries to feed them to the leaping inferno.

Tom casts a spell before his conscious mind recognizes Harry. He still holds the holly wand: warped by wild magic until it sprouted tiny branches and buds of new growth, but humming with the raw power of a phoenix in flight.

Somehow, Dumbledore senses the passage of the spell. With a delicate flick of his wand, it ricochets off into the sky. The old man turns, slow as glaciermelt, and fixes his burnt-red eyes on Tom.

A bloody, smoking wound splits his navel. When he smiles at Tom, it’s with teeth as red as his eyes.

_You did it_ , Tom thinks. _You beautiful, crazy son of a bitch_. But all he can feel is terror and revulsion at the sight of such a powerful wizard injured so grievously.

A line of spittle and blood leaks down Dumbledore’s chin as he opens his mouth. “Surrender, Tom. I’ll let you keep him.”

Harry clings to Dumbledore’s arm with increasing desperation, shrinking away from the blaze.

_Keep him_. Like he’d ever been able to claim ownership over Harry.

That was the same mistake they all made – Dumbledore, Snape, Lily and James, even the other Slytherins. They all underestimated Harry. They imagined him as Tom’s “second”, always in his shadow, always dancing a step behind him. The enchanted furniture of the Slytherin common room reflects the truth, though: they’re _partners_. Tom doesn’t have a throne, but a two-seater.

He would be better served trying to tame a storm than _keep Harry_.

Across the field, Tom meets eyes the color of windswept birch leaves and nods.

He breaks into a run, legs creaking with that same stiffness as his neck. The oaks spill after him, pouring themselves into the screaming hellfire to wrestle with the beasts that embody the blaze. Two forces of supposedly impossible magical strength, colliding – by all rights, nothing should be able to stand against Fiendfyre of this magnitude and power. Then again, Tom can’t comprehend the kind of force it would take to undo the ancient magic stored within the oaks.

And they are being undone: he _feels_ as the oaks burn. Their song rises into a terrible, thought-eclipsing roar as they do battle against the shifting beasts of fire.

Dumbledore’s smile falters. “No! Stop this, Tom! We need the trees!” He coughs bloodily, curling in on himself, but doesn’t drop Harry.

In the old man’s distraction, Tom casts. Just a small spell, but one whose power he has witnessed time and time again. “ _Expelliarmus_.”

Dumbledore’s wand sails through the air and into Tom’s waiting, scarred hand. The Minister finally releases Harry, whirling in rage –

And a flaming tendril of root shoots out at him, burying itself hungrily into his raw wound. As one, white flame and thirsty oak rise to consume him.

Harry scrambles away from the corpse and the clashing, ancient forces that devour it.

Tom is striding forward, needing to just – to just _touch his boyfriend’s face_ , see that Harry’s alright, when he feels a presence drape itself like a thick traveling coat over his head and shoulders. His nostrils fill with the scent of grave dirt and new growth, morning dew and crushed mint. It traces the places where his flesh meets bark, blots out his vision, whispers wordless promises into the echoing recesses of his heart.

The Dark Mantle. Freed from Dumbledore, it seeks a new master. It wants _in_.

Tom knows he stands at a precipice, just as he had in the moments before the Animagus transformation. This power will turn him into something new. Something bigger than himself. If he would just _submit_ –

Tom Riddle has waited for this moment his entire life, but now that it has come he finds himself conflicted. He had glimpsed this future in Harry’s mind: a face wrought of shadow and scale, death dripping from his wand like pus from an old, _old_ wound. This power will reforge him into someone who won’t be _him_ anymore.

“No,” Tom says out loud. “No, I don’t – I don’t _want_ this –”

The Mantle doesn’t care. _Dumbledore once told it the same thing_ , it informs Tom, _and he eventually saw reason_. It. Wants. _In_.

It presses at his lips and ears, the corners of his eyes, seeking to enter his blood and turn him into the monster he was born to become.

But Tom isn’t a serpent. He’s a _unicorn_ , a creature of the Forest from heart to crown.

And so, rather then submit, he gives himself over to a more familiar change.

The unicorn flees from the shroud of the Dark Mantle, throwing itself into the agonizing heat of the battle and toward the boy climbing slowly to his feet in the center of the blaze.

It places itself between Harry and the fire, trying not to cry out from second-hand pain as the trees die a second death. Their song has grown weaker, resonating only faintly through the wood in the unicorn’s body and the ivory length of its horn.

The death of the summoner of this infernal blaze was not enough to put it out. As Tom presses himself against Harry and feels him shudder, he fears that no force can extinguish this fire they have unleashed. He can taste its hunger on the air, smokeless and sharp, horrible in its joy. It would eat the world whole, if left to burn long enough.

Confronted with the reality of the end, Tom finds himself oddly unafraid. He’s back with Harry. If they are to die, at least he can do it in the arms of the one he loves.

He transforms again so he can hold Harry properly. Through the heat, the wand, ring, and Cloak are three points of ice against his skin.

Harry gasps, breath shaky, clinging to Tom like his knees have given out. Tom cups the back of his skull and pulls him close to press a kiss to his hairline.

“I love you, too,” he murmurs to the funeral march of the oaks. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say it back. I love you, Harry Potter.”

Harry turns his face into the light, his spasms stilling, and Tom sees that something is terribly wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispers, eyelids closing over irises the color of poppies in bloom. “This isn’t how it was meant to be…”

Tom chokes on a manic laugh. _God_. It seems had underestimated Harry, too. “I… I see. And the Light Mantle?”

“We can only hope it’s left the U.K.”

Tom holds him closer. “I love you,” he says again. “ _I love you_.”

Harry braces his hands on Tom’s shoulder and stands on his toes to kiss him.

It’s a sweet, lingering kiss, and for a moment Tom can almost imagine it’s enough to ward off the heat of the flames and soothe his blistered flesh. He holds that feeling of peace tight to his chest and closes his eyes, waiting for his world to implode in white pain.

Instead, he feels Harry’s hands on his face, exploratory and light, and hears the scream of Fiendfyre begin, impossibly, to retreat.

“You can open your eyes,” Harry says, almost teasingly. “We… we’re going to be okay.”

Tom opens his eyes on a seemingly endless forest of fire-blackened trunks, ash drifting like snow across the barren ground. “What –? I – oh.” He looks down at Harry, wearing a smug smile undiminished by the red of those _eyes_. “I… I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Nor did I,” Harry says, expression going distant. “Tom, I feel strange. Powerful. Not… not like myself at all.” As he speaks, his hand drifts across the new growths of bark along Tom’s neck and cheeks, the branches sprouting up from his back and arcing, crownlike, over his skull.

“ _Everything_ will be strange from now on,” Tom says. The chill of the three artifacts has not abated. Though the song of the oaks has gone silent, he can hear a new melody on the breeze, pulsing through the parts of him that are no longer human. “The Statute of Secrecy is irrevocably shattered. I don’t know the extent of the fire, but there will have been casualties. And with the Minister gone – with _you_ as – as Dark Lord…”

Harry shivers at the reminder, clinging to Tom even more tightly.

“It’s going to be all right, my love. You’ll see. We’ll remake the world in our own image.”

“What if… what if I don’t want that?”

“If you didn’t want that, you wouldn’t have accepted the power.”

Harry’s hands come to rest on Tom’s hips. “So that means you –”

“No, I don’t want that for myself. Not anymore.” Tom sighs. “ _My_ world wouldn’t be a place I’d want to live. _Our_ world, on the other hand –”

Harry actually _laughs_ , burying his head against the wood of Tom’s chest. “You utter romantic. You’re _hopeless_.”

Tom hums along to the new song and runs his fingers through Harry’s soot-roughened curls. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Harry sways with him. “So… what next?”

Still humming, Tom kneels on the ground of what had once been Hyde Park. There, swaddled in ash and soil, waits a mercury-bright acorn. “What next, indeed…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is dedicated to anyone who re-reads it, to the people who followed every chapter in real time, and to those of you who find it years from now! You're all wonderful. Thank you so, so much.
> 
> If you do take the time to leave a comment, whether today or five years in the future, know that I'll treasure it. It would mean the world just to know that you stuck with the story for this long. In return, expect to find an acorn in an unexpected place within the next three to five months.
> 
> <3

**Author's Note:**

> Please direct any burning questions to [relic--crown](https://relic--crown.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. I hate epilogues with a passion, but I could _maybe_ be persuaded to share my own personal headcanons for what happens next if you send me asks.


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